Dover Beach
by SullivanStreet
Summary: Takes place after S2. Hardy has set out to rebuild his life, his health, his career, and his relationships, but a new case arises (bringing along with it new colleagues) that promises to challenge and test him. Some OC romance later on.
1. Chapter 1

"Right, well, erm, if you do need anything, you know where you can find me." Hardy listened to Detective Sergeant Fields thank him, and promise to call if she had any questions. He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. Yet another case for which his expertise was expressly not required. He sighed, stood up, and for the umpteenth time that morning, looked through his office window to the bullpen where the other officers sat, taking phone calls, making notes, and conducting actual police work.

His new position with the Avon and Somerset Constabulary in Bristol was turning out to be much less eventful – and much less interesting – than he'd anticipated. He had known, of course, that he would not be regularly called into the field; that had been a condition of his medical clearance to work following his pacemaker surgery and his departure from Broadchurch. But even he had not expected to be predominantly desk-ridden, only periodically consulting on higher-profile cases and more often than not providing interrogation training to the newer officers. He was at once resentful of his relegation to his position, and embarrassed to feel such resentment; after everything that had happened in Sandbrook and Broadchurch, he supposed he should feel lucky to even retain his rank as DI.

A knock at his office door pulled him from his restless thoughts.

"Yes – come in!"

A young officer cautiously opened the door, and timidly stepped inside.

Hardy looked up and squinted at the young officer. "Yes, erm, DC…uh…"

"It's –"

"No, no, don't tell me. DC Finnegan!" Hardy declared triumphantly. In his boredom over the past eight months, he had made a competition with himself to remember his colleagues' names. As it was a competition with himself, he wasn't sure if he was winning or losing, but figured either way that it was about par.

"Yes, Sir, thank you. Um, I'm just passing around this card for Donna. She's going on maternity leave in a couple of weeks, so we're all, just, well, you know." Finnegan stepped forward and placed the card and attached interoffice envelope on Hardy's desk. "If you would just cross your name off of the list and pass it along when you're done, Sir."

Hardy looked down at the card and envelope and tried to hold in a sigh. He realized that a part of him had hoped that Finnegan was coming to him for help, for a consult, or – and he barely dared to dream of it – an actual case that he could actually work on.

"Yes, very well, thank you…Finnegan." He stated the name again, noting somewhere in his mind that he deserved double the points for remembering it twice.

Finnegan nodded and stepped backward through the doorway, closing it softly behind him. Hardy dropped back into his desk chair, heaved a sigh, and placed his forehead down on his desk. So far, other than reviewing other detectives' reports and doing some of his own filing, his only task for the day was to sign a congratulatory card for an officer whom he didn't think he would know from Adam, drop five or ten quid into an envelope, and pass it along to some officer who probably had actually police business to conduct.

Hardy had hoped that things would be going better, but after eight months in Bristol, he still felt isolated from the rest of the constabulary, who knew him primarily via gossip, rumours, and misinformation, and he hadn't made as much headway with Daisy as he had hoped. He opened up his most recent email from her, confirming the details for her stay at his flat that weekend. It provided some hope, he supposed, that she had agreed to stay with him one weekend per month, and he reminded himself that the purpose of moving to Bristol in the first place was to be closer to her.

He briefly considered emailing Miller to check in, but then thought better of it. She had been kind enough to respond to his emails over the past eight months, and they'd even had coffee a couple of times, but he could tell that she felt impatient to be around him, as she tried to rebuild her own life and her own relationships with her own children. He was increasingly and unhappily aware that his presence seemed to make people uncomfortable. In a distant part of his mind, he was cognisant of the fact that he hadn't made a habit of getting very close to people, or allowing them to become close to him, but in a more conscious way, he was irritated that efforts to have a relationship with him thus far seemed to be a mostly one-way street.

On a lark, he had asked a woman on a date a few months after moving to Bristol. They had met in an antique book store, during one of his many long walks alone through the city, and after engaging in pleasant conversation for a while, he unshackled himself from his self-consciousness and asked if she would like to have coffee with him. She was a pleasant person, and he imagined that any other person would have quite enjoyed the date, but he simply felt awkward, unable to answer any basic questions about his profession, his family, or even his interests, without feeling that he was stumbling over a lot of omissions. They exchanged phone numbers, but they had agreed through their mutual phone silence thereafter that they would not be seeing one another again.

Hardy looked at the clock on his computer and sighed. It was only 10:00 am on a Wednesday morning. The work week was not yet halfway done, and if not for Daisy visiting him on the weekend, he wouldn't have anything else to look forward to until the next work week began on the following Monday. Resigning himself to his current professional station, he picked up a banker's box from the floor, heaved it onto his desk, and began the tedious process of filing.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Hardy was settling in for another long, uninspiring day of clerical work, when he received a call from Detective Chief Superintendent Michelle Ramsay, directing him in her brief, matter-of-fact way to come see her in her office. He walked quickly up the flight of stairs to her office, noting for a moment the light-headedness that sometimes accompanied such sudden bursts of physical activity, confirmed that his pacemaker was running his heart rate normally, and strode toward Ramsay's office. He knocked lightly on her door, unsure as to whether he should be worried that he may be in trouble with his boss, or excited at the (admittedly far-fetched) possibility that she was assigning him a case. With a single word – "Come!" – she commanded him to enter, so he pushed open the door and stood expectantly.

"Hardy, yes, have a seat." Ramsay had clearly learned over a long career as one of the only black women in a senior position in the police force that she needed to take a brief, no-nonsense approach to dealing with her subordinates if she hoped to command any authority. She nodded pointedly at Hardy for him to take a seat in the chair opposite her desk, so he quietly lowered himself into the chair, studying her face for any sign as to why he had been summoned.

"Don't look so anxious, Hardy, I've got a case for you." Hardy looked up and raised an eyebrow. Ramsay was smiling warmly at him, no doubt aware of how stir-crazy he had been driven, holed up in his office over the last eight months. She slid a thick manila file across her desk towards him. He opened it and flipped through while she explained:

"There has been an escalating series of hate crimes in different districts across the country over the past several months. Always three identical instances of the same crime, at the same time, but in different jurisdictions, so this is the first that the different constabularies have put it together as a pattern and actually united their shared resources. First, three separate Halal restaurants were vandalized, in Gloucester, Oxford, and Hereford; second, three Sikh cabdrivers were robbed, in Winchester, Reading, and Guildford; and third, just last night, three mosques were torched, in Derby, Stafford, and Nottingham." Ramsay leaned back and watched as Hardy turned through the file in his hands.

"Any casualties?"

"None so far, thankfully, but as you can see, the crimes are escalating both in the extent of the damage and the potential for harm to people. We're lucky that no one was injured in the mosque fires last night, but we're worried about where this is going."

Hardy reached the end of the file and frowned. "There haven't been any of these crimes in Bristol…Ma'am."

Ramsay nodded slowly. "This is a consolidated effort. The constabularies of each of the affected cities have agreed, of course, to allocate their own resources to investigate the crimes in their own areas, and to work in collaboration with SOCO and the Hate Crimes Mobile Division."

Hardy looked up. "The Hate Crimes…Mobile Division? What's that supposed to be?"

Ramsay leaned back, considering how to explain the unit. "It's…a bit of a specialized group. Based out of London. They're newer, of course, and they come in to support local constabularies and SOCO when crimes seem to be targeting…you know, gays, blacks, Muslims, Jews, that sort of thing."

Hardy was still frowning. "Ma'am…I still have to ask why I would be assigned to this. There haven't been any crimes in Bristol, and it sounds they they've got lots of boots on the ground on this already."

"Well, this little coalition has been calling around to constabularies in thus-far unaffected jurisdictions, begging for any resources that we can provide in support. This has the potential to be a big case – escalating hate crimes across the country – and it sounds like they have a bit of a hodgepodge arrangement and could use some…senior leadership."

Hardy groaned. Ever since arriving in Bristol, he had been consistently reminded of his role as "senior leadership." For all that the position seemed to hold some esteem, so far it had only been bureaucratic, tedious, and boring. He dragged a hand down the side of his face, thinking. For months, he had been at least arm's-length from any real casework, and now he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being put out to pasture, "supervising" on a case that had no bearing on his own district. He couldn't help but think that he was being gotten out of the way.

"Hardy, you'll be in the field, the most senior detective overseeing an investigation that spans nine districts. They'll each have their own internal reporting structures, but you'll be the one directing the whole operation. I know that you're anxious to get out into the field, and there are enough other officers working on this that you won't have to do anything that's outside of your…medical…restrictions." Ramsay avoided eye contact as she made that last comment, acutely aware that other well-meaning officers had attempted to tactfully address Hardy's condition with him, only to have their heads bitten off. While she was reasonably certain that her rank would protect her from an outburst, she was also aware that Hardy was known to have a flaring temper.

"So I'm leading this thing, then." He made the remark nearly, but not quite, as a question. Ramsay nodded enthusiastically.

"Of course. I told them I'd send my best man up there to take charge and get this thing taken care of."

Hardy nodded and shrugged. "Alright then. So what's the role of this…" he referred to the file "HCMD? Why haven't I heard of them?"

"Well, they've only been operating a few years, and it's just the four coppers that run it. They're based in London, like I said, but they travel around, you know, helping out. I guess they also do some research, education, analysis, that sort of thing, but you don't need to worry about any of that. Actually, here…" she opened her notebook and passed him a newspaper clipping "is an article from a few months ago. There was a Men's Rights group, whatever that's supposed to be, harassing some feminist writers, activists, that sort of thing. They released their personal information – home addresses, phone numbers, names of family members – online and the poor women were hit with a barrage of harassment. The HCMD worked on it and managed to get four convictions."

Hardy looked over the article, the details beginning to pique his interest. He couldn't quite shake his irritability at being treated as an auxiliary resource to be shuffled off to remote crimes, but he resigned himself to working on the case nonetheless.

He heaved a sigh and threw up his hands in surrender. "So, I guess I'm packing a bag?"

"Sir? We're just checking tickets."

Hardy looked up, pulled from his thoughts as he stared out the train window.

"Yes, erm…here it is." He handed his ticket to the attendant and turned back toward the window, his chin in one hand. He checked his watch and determined that he would arrive in Derby before 1:00 pm. Ramsay had updated him before he departed for the train station that SOCO was on the scene at the sites of all three burnt mosques in Derby, Stafford, and Nottingham, but that the HCMD was setting up camp in Derby, as it fell in the middle of the three cities. Opening up the case file, he saw that there had been little physical evidence of any value from any of the nine crime scenes thus far – he scribbled in his notebook, _"Savvy = pros? Prev. crimes?"_ – and there were few helpful leads.

Reviewing the statements by the restaurant owners and cabdrivers, Hardy questioned his earlier inference that the culprits were of an elevated calibre; while the three Halal restaurants had been owned, understandably, by Muslim families, and the mosques were of course Muslim houses of worship, two of the cabdrivers who had been robbed were in fact Sikh. After pausing for a moment, he scrawled, _"Bigoted against everyone vs. can't distinguish Muslims from Sikhs ?"_

Hardy's mobile buzzed in the pocket of his mac. Sliding it out, he saw that it was a text message from Daisy. She was disappointed that he had asked to reschedule their plans for a visit that weekend. Her sentiment left him with a bittersweet feeling; though he was equally frustrated and disappointed to have to cancel plans to see his daughter on such short notice, he couldn't help but feel pleased that she was also deflated by the notion. Perhaps he was getting somewhere with her, after all. He sent her a text message in response, promising to make it up to her, and asking what she would like to do on their next visit together.

"Derby Midland, now arriving at Derby Midland." Hardy's eyes shot open and after a moment of disorientation, he self-consciously wiped his cheek. He must have nodded off during the train ride. Standing sharply and straightening his mac, he had a brief spell of light-headedness, but he rubbed his eyes and the feeling passed just as quickly as it had come. With a sigh and a slight raise to his eyebrows, he walked down the carriage and stepped off of the train in Derby.


	3. Chapter 3

Hardy could scarcely wait for the taxicab to reach a complete stop before thrusting a handful of bills into the driver's palm and climbing out. It had been such a long time since he'd actually been on site at a crime scene, actively working a case, coming up with theories, looking for the one piece of evidence that would blow everything wide open. He breathed in deeply, aware that it was at least somewhat peculiar and not entirely appropriate to relish the experience of walking onto an active crime scene.

On the ride over from the train station, he had noticed that the mosque – or rather, what was left of it – was located in what appeared to be a relatively immigrant-friendly neighbourhood, with a diverse array of stores, restaurants, and other businesses, many operated by and catering to specific ethnic and cultural groups. He hadn't built an inference from this observation, but he noted it to himself nonetheless. The mosque had been located on a street corner, surrounded in each direction by small, well-appointed townhomes. Hardy considered that the layout may lend itself well to eyewitness accounts, and made a note to ask the HCMD if they had canvassed the area already.

Pulling the crime scene tape over his head as he ducked under it, he was approached by a tall white woman in her early thirties. She wore a well-tailored suit with the sleeves rolled partially up her forearms to reveal a series of ornate and vivid tattoos, had closely-cropped dark red hair, and when she pulled off her aviator sunglasses as she stepped up to Hardy, he was immediately struck by the seriousness and edge of her large, dark brown eyes.

"Jenn Harcourt. DC with the HCMD. You'd be DI Hardy then, Sir?"

"Yes. Just got in. Where are we so far?" Hardy had noticed immediately that she had a brisk, nearly militarily direct way of speaking, and was glad for the excuse to forgo formal niceties.

Harcourt nodded forward in the direction for them to walk, narrating the scene. "Mosque fire, last night. One of three. Large canisters of what appears to be some flammable material were placed just inside the windows on both the first and second floors; we have samples headed to the lab for analysis. The perimeter of the building was also doused in what appears to be gasoline. Again, analysing the samples."

They turned around a corner of the ruins of the mosque and Harcourt pointed toward the wall. "They also wrote this particularly epithetical instruction in what we presume is tar – once more, of course, we've sent samples for analysis. We're still sortof in the process of pulling everything together here, Sir."

Hardy squinted at the wall, trying to make out the remains of the tarred writing. After a moment, Harcourt leaned toward him and muttered, "It says, 'Go Home Pakis,' Sir."

"This mosque known to be frequented by a Pakistani congregation, then?"

"Could say so. The Pakistani community has increased in size and relative makeup of the population in Derby over the past several years, and now represents the largest visible minority community in Derby. Not, you know, as many as white people, but, yeah, some Pakistani folks come here." Harcourt paused. "Or came here, I guess."

"So you think the arsonists are aware of the demographics, or just using the racial slur that came to mind? I mean, the string of crimes so far haven't been exactly limited to a specific profile."

Harcourt nodded. "We had the same thoughts. Do they hate everyone who isn't white, or do they not know that there are different types of brown people?" She held out her hands, as though weighing the two options.

They continued to saunter around the perimeter of the building, occasionally conferring on an observation or jotting a thought in their respective notebooks.

"So when do we get to go in – or at least SOCO."

Harcourt shrugged and rolled her eyes. "We don't have clearance from the fire department yet to enter. SOCO is collecting physical evidence from around the perimeter, and we've been working with the local police to canvass for witnesses and CCTV footage."

By this point, they had walked the entire perimeter of the crime scene, and Harcourt had led them halfway down the block towards a large black RV, which Hardy noticed had "HCMD" stencilled on its side in large silver letters.

"Due to the mobile nature of our work, we just keep a small office in London. Most of our work is done from here. It's easier to have an office that moves with us." Harcourt explained as she opened the spring door and stepped up the metal grate stairs.

"Sir, this is DC Dal Patel. He's been taking the HCMD lead on interviews with residents. Dal, this is DI Hardy. From Bristol."

A young, slender man of Indian descent stood up from a table in the corner and offered his hand to Hardy. They exchanged basic introductory pleasantries, and Hardy wondered distantly if the other two members of the HCMD were also as young as the two he had met so far.

Dal walked back to the table and read from his notes. "So we've got a basic timeline of when it all happened: the first neighbour heard a series of loud 'popping' sounds at approximately 2:50 am. Now, she was disoriented and thought that the sounds were coming from inside her home, so she walked around a bit trying to figure out what was going on. Meanwhile, her next-door neighbour woke up a little thereafter because he heard a louder sound – now, I know, it's two different people comparing the volume of sounds, but I think it was a whole different thing that he heard – and when he looked out his window and saw flames coming out of the mosque, he called 999. They logged that call at 3:04 am. Of course, they got a bunch of other calls about it after that, but anyway, the fire department showed up at 3:19 am and the whole fire was put out by about 5:30. No one saw anyone near the mosque or running away during that time, but then again, all the residents with adjacent homes were asked to leave their homes for a temporary camp in a nearby park for safety during that time, and they told me that a stranger could have blended in and used the pack as coverage without them necessarily noticing."

"But if they did that, wouldn't they have had to go to the park and make a statement?" Hardy asked.

Dal grimaced. "Erm…I get the impression that this whole thing kinda took everyone by surprise. I don't think we can say for sure that the responders on the scene would have had enough of a handle to call someone out for lurking away."

The three officers looked at one another. They all knew that there would be no usefulness in decrying another unit's work; but at the same time, it would have been helpful to have had more officers actively working the scene at the time that the crime had been discovered.

Dal sighed, moving on. "So the fire department tells us that the fire had probably been going on a bit by the time Ms. Pitafi woke up to those popping sounds. It probably started at the perimeter with the gasoline, worked its way inside, hit those large canisters by the windows – Ms. Pitafi heard them exploding – and continued to grow a bit until the interior structure gave way. That's the loud crash that Mr. Barr heard a little while later. No eyewitness accounts, and so far nothing from CCTV, either. I'm sorry, Sir, we had hoped to be a little further along by this point."

"Alright, then. Guess we've got our work cut out for us." Hardy could barely hide his restlessness that they had so few useful leads, nearly twelve hours after three major arsons.

"Well, there's a conference call with SOCO and the local officers in Stafford and Nottingham scheduled for 5:30, Sir. We're hoping that something good could come of that."

"Right. Well. Should be good."

There was an awkward silence while the three officers tried to determine a polite way to excuse themselves from their impromptu meeting. After a long moment, Dal spoke up, "Well, Jenn and I have got to get back to it – we want to finish up those interviews and see if we can't scare up some CCTV. We've got all the docs in here, if you'd like to set up camp."

"Yes, right. Thanks." Hardy nodded, as though to excuse them from his company. Almost as an afterthought, he added, "Harcourt, Patel. Nice to meet you both." He figured there was no reason that his self-imposed competition shouldn't follow him.

He settled in at the table – he could tell by its configuration and placement in the small space that it was intended to be the dinner table, as no amount of interior decorating could altogether conceal the fact that this RV had been repurposed from a family camper. He made a silent bet that the bench he was seated on pulled out as a spare bed. True, the cabinets held books, files, and binders, rather than snacks and toys, and a portion of the wall, including two windows, were covered by a map of England with demarcations for each of the crimes, but the space was undeniably a family camper.

Hardy peeked over his right shoulder towards the back of the RV. There was a short hallway with a door on either side. One, he assumed, was the restroom, and the other a small pantry. Beyond the hallway, at the very back end of the RV, an accordion door was pulled mostly open to reveal a tiny room with a double bed against the back wall, overlooked by a large window. He wondered why they hadn'tremoved the bed and converted the small room to be more useful for meeting and working, then shrugged and returned to reviewing the files before him.

Hardy had been poring over the files for forty-five minutes when he heard the spring on the door creaking, and looked up sharply just as a young woman was mounting the stairs and stepping into the camper.


	4. Chapter 4

Hardy leaned back at the table and watched, mouth slightly open and one eyebrow raised, as the woman stepped into the camper. _My God,_ he thought to himself, _she's even younger than the others._ She had short, curly brown hair, shorn down to an inch in length on one side, and wore an untucked blue Oxford over cuffed jeans and – Hardy groaned inwardly – high-top trainers. She seemed surprised at first by his presence, but smiled brightly and stepped toward him with an extended hand.

"You must be DI Hardy. I'm DS Petra Bödigheimer." Hardy awkwardly shuffled out of the booth and shook her hand. He noted that she wore a stud below one lip and a small hoop on the right side of her nose. He tried quickly to reconcile her appearance with the title she had just used to introduce herself. Could she really be the ringleader of this lot?

"Right. Yes. DS Bo…Boding…" he was cut off in his mispronunciation by her good-natured chuckling.

"That's alright, most folks just call me Petra or Bo. I'm the DS with the HCMD. We're very pleased to have you on board."

"Yes, well, I spoke with your, erm, colleagues earlier. Was just looking over the notes."

Petra sat at the chair across the table from the bench and gestured for Hardy to take a seat. "Great, yeah, we can use all the help we can get. It's a shame that we're all only getting called in now. I guess that's the nature of the beast, though, with the decentralized constabularies all working on their own of the nine crimes." She grimaced and added, "So far."

"Yeah, I was thinking about that…could be we're looking at criminals savvy enough to know that it would take us a bit to put it all together and start looking at these crimes as a trend. At first it could have almost looked like a coincidence." He studied her expression while he spoke. She was nodding intently with a slight frown line on her forehead. She gave an impression of great seriousness that did not seem congruent with her apparent youth.

"That's another liability, too. Until we solve this, every time there are three similar crimes the same night, we've got to look into whether they're part of this, or just unrelated coincidences." She reached forward with wide eyes. "Of course, not to say that crimes outside of this aren't important or shouldn't be investigated. I just meant, you know, for getting to the bottom of this series."

Hardy raised an eyebrow. She had seemed genuinely panicked for a moment at the prospect that he would think that she was positing that other crimes were not as important. Her earnestness brought her demeanour more in line with her age.

"Of course, yes." Hardy paused, trying to think of a tactful way to get more information about the division which comprised, it seemed, the majority of his direct contacts for the case. "So, ah, then, you'd be the leader of this operation here? The HCMD?" He realized that it was the first time that he had spoken the initialism aloud, and winced inwardly at its awkwardness.

"Right, yeah. It's just me and the three others – DCs Harcourt, Patel, and Cassidy." Analysing his face, she smirked. "We're a young outfit, I know, but we do know what we're doing."

"Oh, I hadn't really thought about…erm…I mean it all seems fine." Hardy felt a flush crawling up his cheeks, and hoped that his now-overgrown stubble would at least partially conceal it.

"I'm thirty-three, by the way. I've been told I look younger. Thought I'd put your mind at ease." She grinned at him, and he had the distinct sense that she was making a conscious effort to make him like her.

"It is a bit of a young group, though," he ventured. His irritability from earlier in the day was creeping back in; not only had he been shipped off to a crime that had no relation to his constabulary, but now he worried that he'd had a sophomoric band of ineffectual rookies thrust under his care. He attempted to swallow his irascibility and asked, in what he hoped was an appropriately polite tone, "Do you feel your team is equipped for a case of this scale?"

Petra leaned forward slightly on the table. "I have assembled the best team for this job. Each member has specialized academic education in matters of equity, human rights, and social justice, in addition to psychological, scientific, medical, and technological training and expertise." She counted on her fingers, "Jenn has a doctorate in forensic science from the University of Lincoln, and worked for a SOCO contractor for a few years. Dal has a Master's degree in psychology and worked in the Serious Crime Analysis Section. He developed a computing program that leads offenders through a questionnaire, and determines, like, their likelihood of committing an offense in the future, and which offenses they're most to least inclined to commit. I mean, it's not all as 'Minority Report' as it sounds, but SCAS has had huge buy-in from the government to branch it out and reduce recidivism of parolees."

They were interrupted by the creaking of the RV door. A slightly-built white man with short blond hair, also in his early thirties, stepped into the camper and peeled off his mac. Hardy noted that it must have begun to rain slightly.

"And of course, this is Mark Cassidy. He and I founded the HCMD together four years ago. He's got a Master's in Education, and uses our work to track trends in hate crimes and interview culprits to better understand the roots of their actions, and use that information to educate youth and…hopefully, at least, prevent such further crimes in the future."

"That's me, the 'children are the future' task force," Cassidy joked as he reached over and shook Hardy's hand.

"Mark is actually the one responsible for finding Dal, and really, we have Dal to thank for a lot of our funding. Politicians seem to throw money at his work more readily than seminars with kids or graffiti databases." Petra mused.

"And you're the DS." Hardy stated plainly. It was well and good that these people had all spent a lot of time in school, but it didn't quite add up to venerable police experience to him.

Petra sighed. She could tell that this DI would have to see their work to believe in their value. "Yes, I'm the DS. I've been a copper pretty well since I got out of high school. Went to school part-time while I was working on the force, finished my undergraduate and then did a Master's Degree in Human Rights. I know it seems like we're just a school club here, but I assure you that, if nothing else, I've been living and breathing the law for my entire adult life." She paused and broke into a smile. "Which is a longer time than you may have thought!"

Cassidy nodded fervently. "Really, it's Petra's record in law enforcement that got us the authorization to found the HCMD in the first place. Without her experience as a copper, we probably would have just been a community group doing our own research and running the occasional seminar."

Hardy was still leaned back in the bench silently. Petra decided to make one final attempt to convince him of their merits.

"Sir, between the four of us, we have nine postsecondary degrees in seven different fields, a professional network that extends throughout Britain, professional experience with SOCO, SCAS, and six different constabularies, and 35 years of police experience. Wherever there are gaps in our skills and abilities, we look to officers like you. I know that we're an unconventional group, but we do have a proven record in law enforcement."

Hardy sighed and slowly nodded in agreement. "Well, I'm not all as bookish as you lot, but I guess we'll do."

He was still unsure how he would fit into this bizarre scene. Between the various constabularies involved, SOCO, and now HCMD, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was an old racehorse being sent to a petting zoo. He supposed that it was preferable to the dog food factory, but he itched with frustration nonetheless. If not for the commission of actual crimes in this case, he felt as though he were still back in Bristol, training a group of well-meaning and bright but wearyingly green recruits.

Petra reached into one of the cabinets, pulled out a dossier, and handed it to him. "Take it back to your hotel tonight, give it a read if you'd like. We'd really appreciate your feedback, and we're looking forward to working with you." When he only nodded and grunted quietly in response, Petra looked at Cassidy, nodding toward the door, and they excused themselves from the camper.

They chuckled together as they walked through the light rain toward the tent under which Dal and Harcourt were working.

"I can't imagine what his problem is. It's not as though he's like, seventy or something," Cassidy laughed.

Petra smirked. "Oh, I'm sure he's just tired from waking up every ten minutes at night to go to the toilet." She looked at Cassidy and shrugged. "Well, what can we do?"

They smiled at one another as Cassidy put an arm over her shoulders. "Only our best."


	5. Chapter 5

Hardy opened the door to his hotel room just before 8:00 pm that evening, exhausted from the day and still processing the information he had received, the people he had met, and most of all, the details of the case. He could tell by its complexity that this case would be difficult, and only hoped that all of the parties involved could gather the resources to solve it.

He pinned a map of England to his wall, as the HCMD had in the camper, and marked each of the areas where crimes had occurred.

" _So far,"_ Bo had said. He frowned and pushed the thought away. He didn't intend to operate under the assumption that things would get worse before they got better.

He pulled his notebook from his bag and jotted down reminders to himself: get demographic information and an overview of criminal activity for each of the cities.

" _So far,"_ Bo's words echoed in his mind. Again, he shoved her voice aside.

He continued scrawling in his policeman's shorthand:

 _\- Cnxtn's btwn vics?_

 _\- Common acquaint'c's?_

 _\- Bus. opr'tns?_

 _\- AXN: look hate groups online incl. comments on news art'ls_

He smiled wryly as he remembered the way that Miller would chastise him for his habit of firing off questions in rapid succession. Perhaps he would send her a message once the case was more underway. It would be a pleasant change to have something to talk about other than their shared attempts to rebuild their lives.

Later, as he sat in bed, more out of boredom than anything, he decided to look over the contents of the dossier that Bo had given him. It included the CVs of each of the four members of the HCMD, and a booklet describing the history of the unit. He wondered in a corner of his mind if Bo kept this dossier on hand because she was so accustomed to her team being doubted.

After reading through the contents, he grabbed his mobile from the bedside table and decided on a lark to look Bo up online. He made a few well-meaning attempts to correctly spell her surname before feeling foolish as he remembered that her name was spelled out in full on her CV. He raised an eyebrow at the results. One of the most popular articles was six years old. He clicked the link and was directed to a news article entitled, "Birmingham Police Officer Injured in Brutal Bus Stabbing." He grimaced at the phrasing; it read as though a bus had been brutally stabbed. He shook his head. He had had his run of experiences with the papers, but thought that even they should be able to pull together a decent headline. Nonetheless, he read on:

 _A police officer has been seriously injured as she apprehended a man allegedly armed with a hunting knife in Birmingham._

 _26 year-old Detective Constable Petra Bödigheimer suffered a concussion and an abdominal stab wound after entering a city bus in an attempt to peaceably apprehend a man who was behaving erratically and appeared to be suffering delusions. The man was allegedly wielding a hunting knife and threatening those aboard._

 _The Birmingham Police responded to multiple calls from passengers aboard the bus that a man had begun an altercation with several passengers and then violently threatened the driver to pull into a side street. DC Bödigheimer and her partner were the first officers to arrive at the scene, and she spoke to the man via the mobile of another passenger in an effort to calm him down. After the man refused requests to release the passengers, DC Bödigheimer entered the bus and allegedly spoke with him at length before attempting to apprehend him. While she was ultimately able to place him in restraints without harm to him or the passengers, she sustained injuries in the altercation and was immediately rushed to hospital._

 _David Xin, 41, described how DC Bödigheimer approached the man calmly as she beseeched him to lay his weapon upon the ground. "I don't blame her. It really looked like he was listening, like he was going to put it down and just go with her. Then, I don't know what happened, but he was on top of her. I heard her head hit the floor, like a loud cracking sound, and there was so much blood. I don't know how she got the cuffs on him. I thought she might be dead."_

 _Two further police units arrived within several minutes, and were able to lead the since-restrained man into custody._

 _Reports indicate that the man – whose name has not been released – was experiencing a psychotic break due to a drug interaction, and has been taken to hospital for observation. Police have not publicly stated whether the man will be charged._

 _DC Bödigheimer is an eight-year veteran of the police force, having worked previously with the Hampshire Constabulary._

Hardy rubbed his eyes wearily as he took in the information. He tried to remember what he had been doing when he was twenty-six years old. He had been a newlywed, working a beat in London and living in a tiny flat with Tess. He supposed that this sort of incident could easily happen to any officer, but the article nagged at his mind as he tried to imagine the bright, cheerful DS he had met that day laying with critical injuries on the floor of a city bus.

He frowned as he turned back to his mobile browser. This time he navigated to a basic web search of the HCMD. To his surprise, there was a short Wikipedia article about the unit. It described how the unit had been founded four years ago by Bo and Cassidy, using small amounts of funding from various constabularies across Britain, as well as academic grants and donations from human rights and equity groups. Reading further, he saw that, though the HCMD had been founded as a community outreach and watchdog group of sorts, it had been contracted to assist with solving several hate crimes right from its inception, and so after only a year was granted status as its own mobile division with full police privileges, at which time Bo and Cassidy were able to recruit Patel from SCAS and Harcourt from SOCO.

Scanning the footnotes on the Wikipedia page, Hardy hovered over a hyperlink to another article about the HCMD and, shrugging to himself, clicked on it. This was an interview with the four members of the HCMD in a small community newsletter. They had apparently visited the town for one of their educational seminars, and took the opportunity for some publicity. The newsletter was not a major news outlet by any means, but through the interview Hardy was able to discern the distinct personalities of each of the members of the HCMD. Harcourt was analytical, scientific, and matter-of-fact; she spoke in short, declarative statements, but qualified her statements as necessary so that she could never be quoted as saying something that turned out to be incorrect. Patel was imaginative and innovative; Hardy imagined him squirming excitedly in his seat as he gave long, enthusiastic answers about their methods. Cassidy was perceptibly intelligent and thoughtful, and had a clear focus on their outreach programs and, as he put it, "affecting broader social change."

And then there was Bo. Though the leader of the team, she did not take over the interview, and repeatedly referred to their accomplishments collectively, refusing to personally take credit. There was something about her that differed from the others, however. Hardy couldn't put his finger on it at first, and so re-read her responses in the interview to get a handle on her. After a while, he realized what it was: unlike the others, Bo spoke like a police officer. She used police language, and though she jumped in to express enthusiasm about their work in solving hate crimes and apprehending suspects, she allowed the others to go on without her input when they talked about their social and educational programs. She had been a copper for the longest time, so Hardy reasoned that it would make sense for her to come off differently. He tried not to admit to himself that his nocturnal reading had slightly endeared her to him.

He closed the browser tab of the interview, and then the tab of the Wikipedia page, and was left staring at his starting point: the basic web search of Petra Bödigheimer. A thumbnail of her constabulary portrait gazed back at him from the top of the search results.

As he set his mobile on the bedside table, climbed under the sheets, and turned off the lamp, he assured himself that he had not at all noticed her bright, almond-shaped hazel eyes, the light dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks, or her commendable record as a police officer and agent of, as Cassidy had described, "broader social change."


	6. Chapter 6

"Second floor, flammable materials placed near windows. Does this affect the combustibility of the contents? Was it to ensure that the flames would be seen? Is that to make people panic? Wouldn't that make the fire department more likely to show up and put out the fire? Did the arsonists want the whole building to burn down?" Hardy was walking cautiously through the remains of the mosque, making notes to himself on his Dictaphone. He found it easier to record his stream of consciousness-style thoughts if he recited them into a recording device than to bother writing it all down as he walked.

He had to pick his way carefully through the destruction; pieces of the walls and ceilings lay disintegrated on the floor, with wires hanging down from above him and rubble strewn in every direction. He realized that it had been years since he had been inside the wreckage of a burnt building. Even now, more than 24 hours after the fire had been completely put out, the overwhelming smell of smoke made his throat itch and his eyes sting. The fire department had cleared a walkway for the police through the building, indicating where it would be safe to walk without concern for the floor caving in beneath them. Sunlight poured through the windows, catching dust and soot in the air and casting shadows over the piles of rubble.

He continued to slowly make his way through the building, stopping every several steps to inspect the scene and record more notes. He wasn't entirely optimistic that there would be much left in the way of evidence – the arsonists had seen to that – but at the same time, he had seen plenty of cases blown wide open by a tiny shred of evidence; a strand of hair, a lipstick smudge on a teacup, a credit card receipt…

 _Or a pendant,_ he mused. He allowed his mind to briefly drift back to the case that had pivoted his life into its current direction, but quickly tore himself back to the scene at hand. He stepped cautiously through the debris, continuing to record his notes. He had to admit to himself that he had desperately missed doing this work – and it helped that the HCMD seemed content to leave him to his own devices this morning without interruption.

Stepping towards one of the windows, he looked down towards the large white tent where various other officers were conferring. There was a short table set up with a computer monitor, and the four members of the HCMD were regarding it thoughtfully, each with their own notebooks in hand.

A few minutes later, Hardy received a text message from Bo asking him to come down to discuss some evidence. He walked carefully back the way that he had come and climbed down the temporary scaffolding that the fire department had set up – they had agreed for the team to inspect the building for evidence only on the condition that all of their own safety requirements were adhered to strictly. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sunlight when he exited the mosque; looking up towards the sky, he wondered idly if it would rain again. One of the liabilities of collecting evidence at an English crime scene was the ever-present possibility that a swift rainfall could wash it all away.

"What do we have?" he inquired as he approached the table where Bo stood with her team.

Dal referred to his notes: "We got some CCTV footage from the fire in Stafford. Two people dressed all in black, wearing ski masks, if you can believe it, were caught on tape running down a side street away from the mosque several minutes before the fire was called in. The camera lost them after that, so we don't know how they escaped…or in which direction…or to where." He grimace apologetically. "But, we did have similar footage from Oxford and Gloucester from the first crimes, the restaurant vandalism. So if we weren't sure before, we certainly are now. The crimes are connected with a common MO."

"And you pulled all the CCTV from each of the scenes – bank machines, businesses, private video surveillance from residences?" Hardy asked.

Dal flinched slightly. "Well, we're canvassing, of course, and we'll get everything we can. It just takes some time to –"

"Then take the time and get it done. Don't waste our time updating on nothing. Report back when you have something that can help." Hardy hadn't meant to be so short with the younger officer, but his irritation was rising again, both at the difficulty of the case and his perception that the HCMD weren't pulling their weight.

It was silent for a long moment after Hardy's outburst. He could see Harcourt shoot Dal a sidelong glance, which only served to put him further on edge.

"Right, Sir. Sorry." Dal mumbled as he closed his notebook. He nodded at his colleagues and strode toward the RV to continue his work.

"Alright, good work. Let's keep it up. We'll loop back at the end of the day to see where we're at." Petra clasped her hands together in front of her and nodded at her team to invite them to move along.

Hardy looked at her with a raised eyebrow, sensing that she had not intended for him to be dismissed. Once her team members had dispersed out of earshot, she sighed and leaned back against the short table. "DI Hardy. Sir."

He had the unpleasant feeling that he was about to receive a dressing-down. He crossed his arms and pushed his chin upward in slight defiance.

"We are truly grateful for your support with this investigation. Really, we value your contributions. But I have to tell you, I don't manage this team by chastising them in front of one another. We work collaboratively, and where necessary, we provide constructive feedback and push one another helpfully."

"Could be you'd get more done if you pushed a little harder." Hardy was staring hard into Petra's calm gaze, challenging her to push back.

"Sir, this team is my responsibility, and any issues with our work output can be brought to me directly and privately. I appreciate that you outrank me, but at the end of the day, I am responsible for the HCMD." She paused, and then smiled at him brightly, clearly relieved to be finished with the more uncomfortable portion of their conversation. "Now, I'm going to go work with Dal to canvass for more CCTV footage. You're right, there may well be more footage out there." She picked up her notebook, and as she walked past Hardy, she placed one hand gently on his still-folded arms. "I hope that your outlook has improved by our next meeting." With that, she treaded across the grass towards the RV.

Hardy stood still with his arms still folded and his mouth slightly open. He had the uncomfortable feeling that a junior officer had just censured him, and the even more uncomfortable feeling that he may have admired her for it.


	7. Chapter 7

At Bo's suggestion, Hardy brought a more constructive attitude to the following morning's roundtable meeting with HCMD. He arrived early to the RV and as he warmed his hands on a mug of tea, took the opportunity to review the notes which his software program had transcribed from his Dictaphone. The team filtered in and joined him at the table. It was admittedly somewhat cramped, and gave the impression of an overcrowded family vacation, but there was an unspoken consensus that it was too early in the day to start complaining.

Bo reviewed the progress that they had made over the past few days, pausing periodically to drag a fluorescent highlighter through her notes. Hardy had noticed this tendency, and deduced that she was highlighting brief, tangible questions that needed to be answered: how far did the culprits travel on foot to each of the crime scenes; does a certain piece of physical evidence have any unique signifiers; did anyone stand to profit materially or financially from any of the crimes, etc. Hardy noted that while Bo's leadership style was certainly collaborative, she would sometimes drift off and scribble something in her notebook, often chewing on her lower lip. He found that there was something about this style that amused him, as though Bo was slipping between her role as an affable people-manager and that of a sombre detective. He suspected that the latter persona came to her more naturally, and that the former was intended as more of a means to an end. He had to grudgingly admit that, based upon a few days' observation, Bo did in fact have the chops to be a serious copper, notwithstanding her age and relative inexperience.

"DI Hardy, we'd love to hear your thoughts." Bo's voice and the attention of the room tore him from his reverie.

"Right. Erm, we should trace online activity. Not sure where we'd start, but we know we have at least, say, a half-dozen suspects here. Plus, vandalism, arson – those are typically youth's crimes. Could be they've got some sort of…I don't know, social media." Hardy was aware that he was out of his depth commenting on the potential social media presence of a band of young criminals, but at the same time, figured that the suggestion may prove helpful, even if only to distract from the fact that he had clearly been lost in his thoughts during their meeting.

Bo smiled, but sighed. "Normally, we'd be all over that by now, but we just don't have the resources to do the deep-dive that we'd like to. As it is, Dal was up all night printing off the comments sections from all of the online news articles about the crimes, and looking up their online profiles."

Dal nodded. "I'd like to say that it was worth it to violate the one rule of the Internet – 'never read the comments' – but really I've only come up with a bunch of hacks who, aside from wishing that all immigrants would leave the country, are relatively harmless."

"We'll tell the other constabularies that we want to prioritize online monitoring, but I'm not sure what they can do. SOCO and the locals are all pretty tied up with these crime scenes at it is." Bo's dejected tone belied her attempt to smile optimistically.

They tied up their meeting, each referring to their own task lists for the day, and stepped, one by one, out of the RV. Hardy had told them that he would be working out of the RV for a short while to finish up some phone calls, and once he heard the coils of the door creak, followed by the clang of the door shutting, he pulled his mobile from his jacket pocket.

He leaned back in his chair, took of his glasses, and unconsciously raked his fingers through his beard as he scrolled through his contact list. He hadn't mentioned his idea to the team, as he didn't want to create any false hope, but he had an idea.

"Alistair Murray speaking."

"Yeah, Murray, it's Hardy. I'm working in Bristol now, but I'm up in Derby at the moment working on those mosque fires, and I might have a job for you." Alistair Murray was an old friend, of sorts, and Hardy had periodically had occasion throughout his career to recruit him for technological support on his cases. He figured that this could serve as just such an occasion. He briefly described the case, and before he could even ask, Murray had predicted what Hardy was going to say.

"So you're looking for a deep-dive. If there's anything to be found – and there's always something – I'll find it."

"That's great. I don't know what to tell you to look for, but just let me know. Now, I'm guessing that –"

"I'm gonna need something, though." Murray interrupted.

Hardy raised an eyebrow. Murray was usually pleased to help and hadn't, as far as he could recollect, called in any favours in exchange.

"Well, I don't think we really have any sort of budget…" he began.

"Not looking for money. You said you're working with Dal Patel?"

"Erm, yeah. Kid from…I don't know, I think they said he was with SCAS before?" Hardy was trying to figure out what Murray could want with Dal.

"Yeah. Get me a call with him. I've developed an upgrade to his profiling algorithm and I want to pitch it to SCAS. Christ, if they take me up on it, I could retire early. And buy-in from the original developer would really go a long way."

"Erm, I…suppose…" Hardy exhaled audibly. "I could set up a call. I'll talk to him, I guess."

"Good, brilliant. I'll get on the dark net tonight after work and send you anything I can find."

"Good, good. Talk soon, then." Hardy ended the call and sighed as he pulled his fingers through his hair. He didn't relish the idea of asking Dal for a favour, but considered that it may be his just deserts for criticising him the day before.

Hardy stepped out of the camper and scanned the small yard for Dal. He wasn't within Hardy's range of view, so he assumed that he had gone back to the arduous task of canvassing every business, building, and home for CCTV footage. In fairness to Dal, it was a labour-intensive and infrequently rewarding undertaking. Bo and Harcourt were standing beneath the large white tent, leaning over a table and gesticulating in engaged discussion. Hardy approached them, and observed as they continued working.

"So it's definitely the same in all three, then." Bo was saying.

"Yeah, no doubt. It doesn't have unique signifiers, but we know from the chemical composition that it's at least the same compound." Harcourt generally evinced a reserved, nearly stoic personality, but for a moment, her eyes gleamed in excitement.

"What's that, then?" When Bo and Harcourt's heads snapped towards him, Hardy realized that they had not previously been aware of his presence under the tarpaulin.

"Got the chemistry report back from SOCO early. The same substance was used in all three mosque fires." Harcourt referred to the report. "It's a…'highly flammable lacquer thinner.' Based on the composition, SOCO has determined that it's an industrial-grade lacquer thinner, which also sort of stands to reason, given the huge quantity that would be required to pull off all three fires."

Harcourt looked up at Bo and Hardy and winced slightly. "Unfortunately, that's about as specific as the information gets on the lacquer thinner – other than identifying that it is industrial-grade, there really aren't any further unique signifiers. We won't be able to use this information to pinpoint a manufacturer or distributor." She looked at Hardy expectantly and steeled herself for his gruff response.

Hardy nodded thoughtfully. He reached out his hand and raised an eyebrow, asking Harcourt to pass him the report. She complied, and he pulled on his glasses as he looked it over.

"Very well. This is good, Harcourt. Try to see if the same agent has been used in other arsons. Could be these weren't their first. They were well-executed enough, maybe they needed practice."

Harcourt and Bo exchanged an inscrutable glance. "Thank you, Sir. I'll look into it." Harcourt nodded, gathered her notes, and headed back toward the RV to complete her work.

When Hardy looked up from the notes in his hands, Bo was smiling at him.

"Good then. Just gonna go find…gotta talk to Dal." He felt the familiar twinge of discomfort in referring to his colleague by his given name, but it was no less welcome than the peculiar feeling of Bo's grin on him as he walked away from the tent. Hardy had to summon the entirety of his willpower to resist the urge to turn back to see if she was still watching him.


	8. Chapter 8

Hardy didn't find an opportunity to speak with Dal privately about Murray's request until the early evening, when the team had gone back to the hotel for the night. Hardy went to his room to change his clothes and wash up, and was relieved that by the time he got down to the hotel's restaurant for dinner, Dal was sitting alone.

"Mind if I sit?" Hardy asked as he gestured toward a chair at the table where Dal was sitting.

"No, not at all, Sir. Of course." Dal was visibly nervous, and Hardy noticed his eyes quickly dart around the room to see if any of his other colleagues were still around. He felt slightly guilty that he put Dal on edge, but at the same time hoped that he could leverage that anxiety to accomplish his goal.

Hardy sat and idly looked over a menu for a moment. Dal pretended to be busy checking emails on his mobile.

Figuring that he may as well get it out of the way, Hardy lowered his menu and looked over his glasses at Dal.

"So I may have a lead…well, not a lead, really…more of an avenue to potentially find a lead. And I was thinking," he paused "I was hoping I could get your help."

Relieved to be talking about work, Dal perked up. "Of course, Sir. What can I do?" Hardy had to admit, what this team lacked in age, they made up for in eagerness.

"I've got a contact who can do the heavy lifting with the online monitoring. You know, like we were talking about. And he can do it, like I said, but he'd also like to talk to you."

Dal was confused. "About the deep-dive? I mean, I can chat about it, but I'm not sure I'm really the expert. My experience is more with the programming side, not so much with monitoring the dark net. Harcourt is pretty good with that stuff, if you'd like."

"Yeah, no, it's not that. My contact can do all the work with finding information and all that. It's more that he'd like to talk to you about the work you did with SCAS. He's a bit of a fan of your work, I guess, and he's got some suggestions he'd like to pitch to them about your recidivism profiling program, or…not sure what it's called, but you know. He wanted to talk to you before he goes to SCAS with it. I guess it's a quid-pro-quo scenario. If you just let him chat you up a bit about the program, it could help the case."

Dal blushed, equal parts embarrassed and flatted. "Yeah, I'd be happy to. That sounds great. Thank you, Sir."

Hardy nodded. "And thank you. I'll get you his card and you can set up a call together. Not sure what he can dig up online for our case, but I reckon it can't hurt."

At that moment, Bo walked – or rather, nearly ran – into the dining room, and upon spotting Hardy and Dal, marched quickly over to their table.

"Come on up to my room. We've got to meet."

Harcourt and Cassidy were already in Petra's room when they arrived. Cassidy sat at the desk on his laptop, and Harcourt was seated in the wingback chair in the corner, scrolling on her tablet as she finished up a phone call.

Once Harcourt hung up, Petra addressed the two of them.

"So, what do we know?"

Cassidy responded first. "Three car explosions, identical MOs, different cities. Newcastle, Lancaster, and…" he looked at his computer screen.

"Sheffield. Five-gallon drums of gasoline placed in the boots, rigged to a basic timed ignition. Looks savvier than it is." Harcourt finished for him.

"Casualties?" Petra was clenching and unclenching her firsts at her sides in anxiety.

Harcourt continued to read from her tablet. "No fatalities so far. The cars were all unoccupied at the time – thank God – but there were injuries sustained by passersby when they were hit by flying shrapnel."

"Shrapnel?" Petra's eyes were wide.

Harcourt looked up. "That's correct. We're not sure yet exactly how they were rigged, but they had ball bearings, small pieces of cut scrap metal, that sort of thing. We're anticipating at least three amputations." She hesitated, "So far."

Hardy looked to Bo to find that she was already looking at him meaningfully. He could tell that they had the same thought: this was the first instance of overtly, intentionally violent crime in this pattern. Whoever the culprits were, they had just escalated.

Petra looked to Cassidy. "Anything else?"

"It's only been a few hours, but the constabularies in Sheffield think they may have some CCTV footage. I'm expecting them to send us the file within the hour."

"Good. Let me know as soon as we have something. What about victimology – were the cars owned by visible minorities? What about the shrapnel victims?"

"Yeah, it's the same xenophobic rubbish as usual – one was a delivery car for a Chinese restaurant, of all things. We're still looking for confirmation on the Lancaster vehicle. And in Newcastle, looks like it was a van used by the Jewish Community Centre. So they're really branching out with their hatefulness. Basically they're covering off anyone who isn't a WASP." Cassidy was clearly brimming with frustration, reining in his feelings only for the sake of professionalism. "As for the shrapnel victims, they're all over the board. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Alright. Keep your phones on – I want to know everything you know as soon as you know it. We may be heading out tomorrow, so you might want to get packed up." Petra looked at the weary, concerned faces of her team members. "We can only do our best, but I am going to need everyone to do their best." The team seemed to sense her tone of finality, and filed out of her room.

Hardy paused at the door. "I haven't eaten yet. Shall we make it a working dinner?"

Petra ran her hands down her face and kneaded the back of her neck. Finally, she sighed. "Yeah, I guess I should eat. I'll just grab my notebook."

Hardy had expected that once they sat down at the table, Bo would look over the menu before immediately diving into the case. Instead, she slapped her notebook and pen onto the table, and reviewed her notes with one hand fisted in her hair before even considering the menu.

After several minutes, Hardy spoke up. "Already know what you're going to order, then?"

Bo looked up, looking nearly surprised to see him seated across from her.

"Right, yes. Um," she flipped the menu over and scarcely glanced at it before closing it again and pushing it away from her place setting. "Fish and chips. Can't go wrong."

Hardy shrugged and pulled out his own notebook, feeling reasonably assured that Bo would not think it rude. "So shall we do up the 'what we know'?" he asked her.

"The…yeah, that'd be a good idea." She started to flip to a new page in her notebook, then seemed to reconsider. She looked around for a moment, then leapt over to a nearby vacant table, from which she snatched a children's menu.

"Fish and chips too adult for you, then?" Hardy inquired.

"No, I want it to write on the back." She held up her pocket notebook, "Too small to get the big picture."

Hardy shrugged. He was interested enough to watch her at work. In block print, she wrote atop the back of the menu, "WHAT WE KNOW." She looked up at Hardy expectantly.

"Right. Well, first things first, they're identical hate crimes in groups of three." He noted that Bo listed his observation as three points: identical; hate crimes; groups of three.

"Escalating levels of violence. Not targeted to one specific group." Bo spoke aloud as she wrote.

"Yeah, but that could be because they hate all the groups they've targeted, or because they're too ignorant to have nuanced bigotry."

Bo pointed her pen at Hardy. " _And_ , even though their crimes were of a more juvenile class until the car bombs, they're savvy enough to know how to avoid CCTV, and wear nondescript clothing and face coverings in case they are spotted. That's sort of another contradiction. Weird."

At that moment, the server arrived at their table to take their orders. Once he had left, they settled into a contemplative silence as they considered their list.

Hardy tapped the table. "What do you make of this escalation of violence, then? Seems a bit rapid to go from petty vandalism to car bombs in a couple of months."

"Yeah, I can't figure that. Plus we haven't even talked geography – I mean, it's feasible for three separate teams of one or three people to be hitting one each of the scenes, but to plan the crimes, execute them, and then get away, I don't know how you could hold down a job. So I'm left with two pretty gross options: either there's a group of three to nine very dedicated, rapidly escalating racist criminals wreaking havoc across the country, or there's a network of…" she cast her eyes upward while she quickly calculated, "could be fifteen or more people at this point, also wreaking havoc across the country. I mean, the latter may make more sense because the crimes have been different enough so far. I also can't figure why they seem to be in clusters; even tonight, Lancaster, Newcastle, Sheffield," she listed them on her fingers. "Not exactly close, but they're all in the North. Think about it, Derby is smack between Stafford and Nottingham. Same with Gloucester, Hereford, and Oxford."

Hardy nodded in agreement. "Guildford, Winchester, and…what was it,"

"Reading!"

"Bloody Reading. Now that all cannot be a coincidence."

"Can't be. But I haven't got a damn clue what to make of it. Are they like Boy Scouts, with local…units, or packs, or whatever it is? There's got to be some significance."

They both leaned back wearily in their seats. When the server arrived to drop off their food, they both tucked in quietly. After several minutes, Bo spoke up. "My Mum's family is in Newcastle, actually."

Hardy looked up at her. "I didn't realize. Are you…worried?"

"Nah, I texted my parents. Everyone is safe and accounted for. But my grandparents go to that Jewish Community Centre. Could've easily been them." She looked up at Hardy and let out a sigh as she shook her head. "My grandmother came to England from Germany in 1938. Could you just imagine if she got away from goddamn Hitler, then got herself blown up in goddamn Newcastle in her nineties? God, I can't bear to think."

"Well, thank goodness she's alright, then." Hardy was at somewhat of a loss for words, so attempted to steer away. "I didn't realize that you were…well, Jewish." He felt immediately foolish, and hoped that Bo could not see him blushing.

Thankfully, she chuckled good-naturedly. "Yes, I'm Jewish. The genuine article. Though I suppose it depends who you ask. I don't really go to temple or anything. What about you, do you go to church, or any of that?"

"Nah, never really went in for any of that stuff. Being a copper probably hasn't exactly compelled me to attend a mass, or sermon, or whatever it is, either."

"I'll say. We can't really be expected to be devout."

Hardy paused, considering whether he should tell Bo that he had read about the incident on the bus in Birmingham. Figuring that he'd already embarrassed himself and it hadn't fazed her, he said, in what he hoped was a casual tone, "I read an article, you know. Something about you getting stabbed on a metro bus?"

Bo finished her glass of water, nodding slightly. She seemed undeterred by his line of inquiry. "Yeah, that was wild. It actually ended up being a bit of a blessing in disguise, really. Guy nicked my liver, it bled like crazy, and the surgeons had to go in and cut out a bunch of it."

Hardy raised an eyebrow – he was yet to see the blessing.

"I know, right. But hear me out. They're digging around in my guts, and when they go to chop out this bleedy bit of my liver, they see that I have early signs of liver damage. Now, keep in mind that by this point I'd been pickling myself in whiskey for like, ten years solid. They told me about it when I got out of surgery, and…well, I guess it was like a wake-up call. I took – or more accurately, was placed on – a medical leave from the force, Mark and I started the HCMD within a year, and now I'm six years sober. I wasn't in love with taking sordid private investigator jobs to pay the bills while we were getting started, but I think it all came together nicely. Well, I mean, car bombs and vicious racism aside…you know what I mean."

"Well that's certainly an optimistic approach. I used to do PI work, myself. It really is bloody sordid work."

Bo smirked. "If the copper thing doesn't work out for us, we can go into sordid business together. Take scandalous photos with a long lens camera, follow politicians to their mistresses' houses."

"You're a bit cheeky, you know."

Bo winked at him. "You have no idea."

Hardy blushed – he wasn't sure what to make of this interaction, which seemed to be edging increasingly toward flirtation. He didn't have time to consider his response, however, as their mobiles both began buzzing against the table. They snatched them up immediately, hoping for a lead on the case. It was a text message from Harcourt: _CCTV footage in Sheffield. We got plates on a getaway car._


	9. Chapter 9

Within five minutes, the entire team had been reassembled in Bo's hotel room. She and Hardy hadn't even taken the time to pay for their meals properly; Hardy had simply tossed his credit card onto the table as Bo scribbled on a page of her notebook, _"Sry had to LV. Chrg this card."_ She may have normally objected to him paying for her meal, out of principle, but she considered that in this case, she had more important principles on which to stand.

"So we have the plates in Sheffield. What do we know?" Bo's focus was laser-like in its intensity as she addressed Harcourt.

"They correspond to the make and model of the vehicle in the video, so we're pretty sure they weren't switched out. We ran the plates and they go back to Jane Abbott. Seventy-eight years old, widowed, retired, lives just outside of town. No priors, not even a parking ticket or a driving infraction – which may make sense, given that the plates have been expired for two years. It's only an hour drive, we could leave now and talk to her tonight."

"What does the local say?"

Harcourt rolled her eyes. "They want to talk to her in the morning. They figure she isn't going anywhere tonight, and they don't want to wake up an old woman to harass her about her car."

"But it's only–" Cassidy looked at his watch "Half nine! People have lost _limbs_ , Petra. Let's just leave now. She can miss out on a few hours of sleep."

All eyes turned toward Bo. She bit her lower lip as she wrestled with the decision.

"I'm sorry, Mark. Everyone, you know how it works. We can't operate if we don't have the goodwill of local police forces. They want to wait until the morning, and they want to take the lead. We'll finish up at the mosque in the morning, pack up, and head to Sheffield. They won't give us interrogation privileges if we don't heed their wishes. I'm sorry."

There were disappointed sighs around the room. Petra knew that it was an unpopular decision – of the sort that she had been forced to make with increasingly regularity since the inception of the HCMD – but at the end of the day, she needed to consider the bigger picture.

"We can all keep doing the research, background and follow-up that we were planning to do. We can finish up at the mosque in the morning and be in Sheffield before noon." She looked around at the disgruntled faces of her closest friends. "Let's take this as the win that it is – this is the first evidence we've had that puts anyone's name anywhere near any of these crimes. The delay is only going to be a minor setback in the context of a larger victory." It wasn't the inspiring speech that she hoped to give, but it was the best that she could do in the circumstances. "Dal, make sure that we have digital copies of all of the CCTV footage that you've pulled. Contact the locals at each of the scenes and tell them to keep canvassing and send us updates every time they find anything. Harcourt, follow up on the lacquer thinner as we discussed – DI Hardy may be right that there could be practice fires we haven't linked into this yet. While you're at it, call someone in Counter-Terrorism and see if there's anything familiar, like a signature or something, about the car bombs. Wake someone up; they're CT Command, I don't care. Mark, it's a little more abstract, but I'd like you to see if the geography of the crimes tells us anything. They seem to be grouped roughly in geographic clusters. If there's anything significant about that, I want to know."

The team was still visibly frustrated not to be able to immediately chase their newest lead, but they accepted Petra's directions. They spent another half hour going through logistics together, with Petra periodically scribbling in her notes and assigning further tasks as necessary.

Finally, it was after ten o'clock and they filtered out of the room. As Hardy walked past her, Petra gently placed a hand on his arm and said quietly, "Thanks for dinner. Next one's on me." Not quite knowing how to respond, he dipped his head in a quick nod and left for his own room.

Only Petra and Cassidy remained in her room. He sat at the table, and she on the foot of the bed.

"You know I hate this, right? I want to get in the camper and high-tail to Sheffield more than anyone. They know that, right?" For all that she presented as a confident people-manager and leader, Petra had an invisible companion in the back of her mind who constantly questioned her decisions, seeded fear and self-doubt, and fostered a quiet but constant anxiety about her social relationships. She had spent a decade of her life drowning that voice in liquor, but now that she was sober, it was a constant companion. On some days, it pushed her to prove it wrong, but in moments such as this, it only made difficult situations even more unbearable.

"Of course, love. You make the decisions because you make the right ones." Cassidy and Petra had been living together for eight years, so he was well familiar with her anxieties and the coping methods to which she had turned in the past. He walked over to the bed and sat beside her. "You make the decisions that get the cases resolved, and that's what you're going to do with this one."

She sighed and closed her eyes for a long moment. "The van from the Jewish Community Centre…"

"Yeah, I know. I didn't want to ask in front of everyone – is the family okay?"

Petra nodded. "Yeah, they're all fine. Thanks." Her eyes were downcast and unfocused. "I can't understand these people, Mark. They're all over the place – I mean, they've covered half of England, and they don't even target one specific group. They're just…they're just so bloody hateful."

"And ignorant. A Chinese food delivery car, a van from the JCC, mosques, halal restaurants, Sikh cabdrivers – at least one of whom was English-born, mind you – there's no focus, no target. They really are just bloody hateful."

Cassidy traced lazy circles on Petra's back with one hand. She didn't usually appreciate affection, but he had always been the exception to that discomfort, and he had come, over the years, to know when she needed support.

"I don't need to raid your bar fridge, do I? This isn't a sobriety-testing moment?" He tried to convey a tone of loving and gentle concern. He and Petra had been best friends since before she got sober, and while he didn't presume that the current circumstances would challenge her sobriety, he knew how to recognize her moments of weakness.

Petra leaned her head on his shoulder. "No, dear. I'll be fine. It's frustrating, it's upsetting, but I'll be fine. I feel useless as it is being cooped up here when I know that there's a hot lead in Sheffield; I'm not going to make myself completely useless by falling off the wagon."

They spoke for a short while as Cassidy internally tried to gauge whether he should be concerned for his dear friend, and Petra pretending that she didn't realize that he was assessing her. It was a routine that they had perfected throughout their years of living together, and in a way the familiarity of that routine provided them both some strange comfort.

When Petra walked Cassidy to the doorway, he paused. "It'll be okay, love. You're doing your best."

Petra smiled at him, tired but appreciative nonetheless. "That's all I can do."

Back in his own room, Hardy was packing up to depart in the morning when he heard his mobile ringing from where it sat charging on the nightstand. He nearly let the call ring through, but decided at the last moment to check the caller ID. He was immediately glad that he did.

"Murray, what do you have? I'm looking for good news."

"Well, I wouldn't call it good, but it may well be helpful to the case."

"That's good for me. What is it?" Hardy was impatient for news that would further their investigation, which he felt had so far been progressing at a relative crawl.

"Alright, so. You're gonna want to write some of this down. I can send you screenshots, that sort of thing, but this is going to be over your head, so try to take good notes." Hardy located his notebook in his jacket pocket, and told Murray to go ahead.

"Okay, good. Now, I'll begin at the beginning so you know what I'm talking about here. There's this thing called a dark net – basically, it's a really restrictive network, like a secret Internet. You can't just look this stuff up online; you need specialized tools, authorization, that kind of thing. One way of making sure the material is invisible and secure is to use this software called Tor, which ensures that all the communication is anonymous. Now, it's nearly impossible to trace any posts on a dark net back to specific users – the IP addresses are anonymized, and you can't really track anything back to a source. If you have the tools, you can get in, make contact with people, make posts, get files, information, that sort of thing, but you'd never know who anyone else in there is. People have used it for sharing illegal pornography, getting drugs…even taking out hits on people. And the whole time, no one knows who you are, and you don't know who they are. You could have your wife whacked by your best friend and never know it was them."

Murray had been right; much of the technicalities were going way over Hardy's head. "Then why hasn't the bloody thing been shut down? You can't even post someone else's copyrighted material online without getting it taken down for IP infringement."

"Right. There's been some headway in tracking down the child pornography groups, but the whole thing is just too big for law enforcement to really keep a handle on."

"Well the thing sounds like a goddamn abomination." Hardy was mildly horrified by the very existence of the world he was hearing about.

"Well, it's not all bad, you see. It provides an avenue for whistleblowers to leak information without fear of reprisal, and for political dissidents to organize anonymously and securely, especially in countries where the government may actually be monitoring their electronic traffic and communications. Also, domestic violence victims can network and support each other in getting out of their abusive relationships. It really isn't just a secret meeting place to sell drugs and child pornography. As with anything to do with the Internet, it's a double-edged sword."

Hardy scribbled his notes while Murray explained this to him, trying to keep up. "Okay. So you went into this dark net. What did you find?"

"Well, it's sort of like a forum. It took a bit of digging, but there were enough key words used in the posts on it that it stood out as being potentially related to these crimes you've been seeing. Now, in addition to being on the dark net in the first place, this forum was additionally restrictive, which piqued my interest. Users have to provide proof of a felony that they have committed in order to be granted admission into the group. And these folks are smart – you can't just Google photos of crimes being committed and submit them to get in. I had to doctor some copies of evidence from a few cold cases to get myself any credibility, but I was lucky and they let me in."

"Great, brilliant. What'd you find?"

"Well I can't yet tell how many users there are in total, but a cursory analysis of the different ways that people are writing, I think it's got to be thirty people, probably more. Broadly, they write cryptically enough that it took some close analysis to make enough connections to be sure. It looks like you've got a network of thirty or more people across the country – maybe even farther, who knows – conspiring and sharing resources to commit these crimes. I'll send you some references from the forum; you should send them to a language analyst and see if they can build a profile on some of the users."

"That's great. Think there's enough there to compare against writing samples if we had suspects?"

"Well, like I said, a lot of it is pretty cryptic, so it's probably not the tone that these people normally use in their writing. But if you have a suspect, and they match the language analyst's profile, a writing sample could help to mitigate the circumstantiality of the evidence. Why – do you have suspects?"

"Can't say. But this whole case is just a mess, so I'm taking any evidence I can get."

"Good, I'll send you everything I have. You should also get in touch with CT Command. They may already have eyes on this group, so they may be able to help. And keep in mind, the government does not appreciate small units of law enforcement going rogue and investigating terrorism on their own."

"CT Command is already on this one, you think?" Hardy hadn't considered the wider implications of having Murray do a little snooping.

"If they're not now, they should be. Racially-motivated, violent hate criminals networking through a secret, anonymous, encrypted online forum? It walks like terrorism and talks like terrorism, mate."

"Right, well, I've got someone putting a call into CT Command anyway to ask about bomb signatures. I'll tell her to put this on their radar while she's at it. Great work on this, thanks. Just send me whatever files you have and I'll take it from there."

"Will do. Oh, and, uh, how about that call with Dal Patel?"

"Yeah, I talked to him. He's agreed to give you a call." Hardy made a mental note to give Dal Murray's business card, and then decided to also jot it down in his notebook so that he wouldn't forget.

After hanging up with Murray, Hardy was about to call Harcourt and tell her what he had found, when there was a knock at his door. Frowning, he checked the time – it was after eleven o'clock. He looked through the spy hole in the door to see Harcourt standing in the hallway, looking as self-possessed as ever, but with a visible look of concern carving deep frown lines in her forehead.

"Harcourt, good. Was just about to come find you." Hardy invited her in and gestured for her to take a seat, which she declined.

"I'm so sorry, Sir. I had no idea that they were going to do this. I was just calling about the bombs."

"What's that now?" Hardy felt his heart flip uncomfortably in his chest, accompanied by a moment of slight dizziness. It was a feeling that he had grown accustomed to in moments of sudden anxiety.

Harcourt looked confused. "You said you were coming to find me. I assumed…" She was studying his face for signs that he had realized what she was about to say, and finding none, proceeded. "I called CT Command about the car bombs, like we said earlier. I ended up talking to a few different people, and they said that there's someone else who was digging for information on these cases today. Someone used a proxy server at a constabulary – they wouldn't say which one – and it seems that they were looking on the dark net for information about the crimes. When I called, told them what I was working on, and asked about bomb signatures, I guess they put it together."

"Yeah, so CT Command knows that we're working this case. That's fine."

"No, Sir, I'm saying…" For the first time since he had met her, Harcourt struggled to find her words. "CT Command is taking over the case. The whole thing. They're on the lookout for domestic terrorism, and they want this case."

"They want to help with this case?"

"No…Sir, they _took_ the case. CT Command is leading, directing all the local constabularies. We're out. You, me…all of us. HCMD isn't on this anymore."

Hardy was absolutely floored by this announcement. "So, what, because it looks like terrorism it can't be a hate crime anymore? We can't be of any service?" He couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voice.

Harcourt sighed and shook her head sadly. "That's it. We're out. CT Command is taking over and we're all being sent home."


	10. Chapter 10

Hardy pulled into the underground garage in his apartment building, carefully backed into his assigned spot, and killed the ignition. As he stood in the elevator on the way up to his flat, he felt the familiar discomfort of trying to avoid looking at himself in the mirrored walls. He had always felt awkward about the elevators in this building, as though they had been designed to trick passengers into picking their teeth or trying out their winningest smiles, only to be walked in on abruptly by another tenant.

Stepping into his flat, he dropped his briefcase on the couch and loosened his tie as he walked into the kitchen to grab a seltzer water, as usual. Every day, he pushed through files and answered questions at work, and every night he came home to this dark, empty flat, reheated some food, watched a bit of telly, and went to bed. With no real involvement in any active cases as work, and no social contacts outside of work, he had fallen into a monotonous routine which, while not overtly depressing, was also in no way inspiring. Daisy had suggested that he get a pet cat, both to keep him company and to give his flat less of a sterile feeling, but he doubted that he would. He thought that there was something especially peculiar about a single, middle-aged man living alone in a flat with only a pet cat – somehow more disturbing than the same man living in the same flat on his own. He supposed that this characterization may be unfair to cat owners, but he could nonetheless not shake his impression.

It had been three weeks since the HCMD had been thanked for their service and invited to move on from the serial hate crimes case. For three weeks, Hardy had been in withdrawal from active police work – he was surprised by the difficulty of the transition, given how short and relatively uneventful his stay in Derby had been. For three weeks, he had been following his monotonous routine, disrupted only by the occasional gleam of hope that he would be invited into the field for a case, and then the disappointment when this hope was inevitably shattered.

He had met with Ramsay a few days after he had come back, telling her that he was desperate to get back out into the field. He told her that his talents and experience were being wasted on a desk job; that he was perfectly well enough for field work; and that being shut alone in an office all day was making his teeth itch.

She had listened patiently and seemingly attentively to his impassioned declamation, and then suggested that he get a plant for his office, a cat for his home, or better yet, both.

"Hardy, you've dedicated your life to law enforcement; trust me, your dues are paid in full. You're in your forties now – why not take the chance to relax a little bit, work regular hours, help train the next generation of new detectives? Spend some time with your daughter. The fact is that you've been known to push yourself too far on cases in the past. I know about you being rushed to hospital from a scene, and being placed on medical leave. I'm certainly not going to be the DCS who killed Alec Hardy."

"With all due respect, I can mind my health. I had ill health for a while, but I'm fine now. Just give me a case."

"In your present position, you get to see lots of cases. Why, just the other—"

"I get to _consult_ on lots of cases. They ask me how long they should wait for the attorney to arrive, and whether it's appropriate for them to witness documents. I haven't even led an interrogation in months."

"Let me think about it. I'm sure we can reach some sort of compromise." Ramsay had stood and held the door open to invite Hardy to leave her office. That had been more than two weeks ago, and the matter had not been revisited.

In an effort to break up the monotony of his lifestyle, he had taken to periodically browsing the files that he had brought back with him from Derby. On this evening in particular, he sat on the sofa with a mug of tea and a bowl of noodles and tried to get a handle on the geographic trend of the crimes. Bo's instinct that something stuck out about the clusters felt right to him – each grouping of crimes tended to be clumped together in loose geographic areas. He frowned, remembering what Murray had told him; they were probably dealing with a network of thirty or more individuals across the country. Could it be that they were loosely organized into local chapters? It would make it easier for them to share resources for their crimes, as with the lacquer thinner in the mosque fires; however, it would also increase the likelihood that local constabularies would pick up on the trend when they became aware of one another's cases. The vandalism and cabdriver robberies hadn't emerged as a pattern at the time because they flew below the radar as relatively unremarkable crimes. The mosque fires, of course, opened up a wider inquiry that took them to their present position in the investigation.

Had that been the intent all along? Were the first two clusters lower-risk practice runs before the escalation to more violent crime? There had been no casualties in the mosque fires, but there could easily have been. Even more concerning was the shrapnel in the car bombs – it was a targeted, intentional means by which to cause bodily harm. Hardy cringed to think of what might be next.

For what felt like the thousandth time in the past three weeks, he reached for his mobile and began to type a message: _"Don't know about you, but I haven't stopped working the case."_

He frowned at the screen. Was that too familiar? He deleted the draft and instead typed, _"I'm still working on the case, of course."_

He wondered if he should insert a question, so as to elicit a response. _"Pulled out the case file on a lark. Have you heard anything about it?"_

He deleted the draft and put his mobile back down. He wasn't sure why he felt nervous thinking about sending Bo a text message about the case, and he preferred not to think about it too much. He chose to focus on the fact that he was bored and unstimulated in his day job, and so picked this case up periodically as a mental exercise out of interest. He pointedly did not think about Bo's good-natured laughter or her warm, nearly flirtatious smile when she had leaned toward him and told him that their next dinner would be on her. He made a conscious point of not sending her a text message taking her up on her offer. Instead, he focused on the facts of the case, and tried to commit to reaching out to Bo only when he had something concrete to offer. He directed his mind to believe that the case was the only reason he was thinking of Bo at all.

Amongst his files from the case was the dossier that Bo had given him about the HCMD. He traced the logo on the front with his fingers, and opened it under the pretense of organizing the documents therein. He paused when he reached Bo's CV, remembering the article that he had read about her stabbing in Birmingham years ago. She had said that it was a blessing in disguise for how it had ultimately brought her to sobriety and the HCMD. Hardy found it difficult to imagine Bo as a drunk; over the years, of course, he had met plenty of officers who were alcoholics – recovering or otherwise – and Bo seemed to stand in stark contrast to them. He had come to associate alcoholism with pervasive self-doubt, traumatic stress from the ghosts of cases past, and an inability to relate socially to others. It was perhaps unfair to think that all alcoholics should exhibit such characteristics; but still, Bo presented as confident, self-assured, outgoing and friendly, with leadership skills and natural social grace. It was only one of the many things about her that he found intriguing.

Hardy realized that he had drifted unwittingly into thinking about Bo outside of the context of the case, and stopped himself. He shut the dossier abruptly, packed up the files, and stood up from the sofa to go wash up. He was struck by a moment of sudden light-headedness, and he had to brace himself on the arm of the sofa to prevent himself from stumbling, but it passed after a minute or two. He traced his fingers over the protrusion under his collarbone where his pacemaker had been implanted. Other than these periodic dizzy spells – which, if he were being honest, were occasionally accompanied by moments of confusion and shortness of breath – he felt as though he was in better health than he had been in years. Ramsay was surely daft not to put him in the field.

Later that night, as he drifted into sleep, Hardy made a point not to wonder if the stabbing had left Bo with a scar – for wondering that would require that he imagine what she looked like under those loose Oxford shirts, and he was sure that he had no interest in imagining such a thing.


	11. Chapter 11

**** Trigger/content warning for graphic description of racially-motivated violence****

After a similar evening three weeks later, Hardy's eyes flew open in the middle of the night. He tried to adjust his vision in the darkness to get his bearings, but felt disoriented and nearly dizzy. He groped at the bedside table until he located the lamp and switched it on. He realized what had woken him at this ungodly hour – his mobile was ringing persistently and buzzing on his nightstand. He grasped at it and tried to make out the caller ID, but his vision was still slightly blurred from sleep.

"Hardy," he half-croaked into the mouthpiece. There was a lump in his throat and for a moment he had to struggle to get his breath.

"Hardy, hi, it's Bo. Petra. Bödigheimer?" When Hardy did not further greet her, she ventured, "From the HCMD?"

"Yep, of course. Sorry, was just getting some winks in." Hardy rubbed at his eyes and tried to make out the time on the digital clock beside his bed - why was she calling him at a quarter to three in the morning? They hadn't had any contact in the six weeks since they had left Derby, and now she was rousing him in the middle of the night?

"I'm terribly sorry to wake you, but I wanted to get moving right away. There's been a lynching in Cambridge. We don't know a lot yet, but I've got to get over there. Can you come? I know you're probably busy, but I don't have authorization to bring my team formally, and I'd really like to have another person with me on this."

"You think it's part of the series we looked at? Are there others?" Hardy paused as the sleepy haze cleared in his mind. "You said a _lynching_? A _death_?" He already had so many other questions in mind: why wasn't she bringing her team? Who from Cambridge had called her in the middle of the night? And why had she immediately thought of him?

"That's right. He's dead. All I know is that he's male, and that based on the crime and his race, Cambridge called me. You coming?"

"Erm, yeah. Can you send me the address? It'll take me a few hours to get there, I'm still in Bristol."

"I know - I'm in Bristol, too. I'll pick you up. Text me your address and I'll see you soon."

"Erm…alright. I'll see you in a bit then." Hardy was puzzled as to what Bo was doing in Bristol, but he could sense her impatience to end the call, so he let her go and began immediately packing a bag. There was no telling how long he'd be gone, so he packed enough for a week and hoped for the best. While he stood on the curb outside of his building waiting for Bo, he emailed Ramsay from his mobile to let her know that he would be going on a short vacation, but that she could call or email him if any issues should arise. In this particular instance – and perhaps only this particular instance – he was grateful that the constabulary did not overly rely upon him, such that he had the capacity to leave suddenly for a week at a time.

After a short while, Bo pulled up in front of Hardy's building and he climbed in.

"Sorry again to ring at such an odd hour. I didn't even really think, I just called you as soon as soon as I heard." She gestured toward the cup holders embedded in the central console. "I brought you a tea, if it helps. I know you don't do coffee. Cream and sugar are in the console. Wasn't sure how you take it."

"Oh. Thanks." They drove in silence for a while as he prepared his coffee and settled in. It was early May, and he expected that the sun would be coming up just as they arrived in Cambridge. Eventually, his curiosity got the better of him and he asked, "So how did you find yourself in Bristol? I thought your HQ was in London – there isn't a hate crime case in Bristol, is there?" He wondered vaguely if he would have even been made aware if there was such a case under his constabulary's jurisdiction.

"Oh, yeah, no, I was just visiting my parents. Did I not mention that I'm from Bristol originally?"

"No, I didn't realize. That's convenient, I guess."

"Yeah, I try to get back to visit them when we're not actively on a case. Between their schedules and mine – they're both doctors – it's tough to make time for visits. I've only even been in town a few days as is. I feel kinda bad."

Hardy could relate to the feeling; he had never been particularly adept at prioritizing his personal relationships and making time the time to fit them into his lifestyle. Even now, with his career placing fewer demands upon his time than ever, he managed only to maintain his relationship with Daisy; most of his friendships had either eroded over the years or been lost by him in the divorce.

"So you said that your team isn't meeting us there?"

Bo looked at him guiltily. "We're not really investigating this in an entirely official capacity, since we're not on the case."

"Does CT Command know to expect us? They're going to notice us there at some point."

Another guilty look. "They may not know about this yet. I mean, we can't even be sure that it's part of the case."

"But what about CT Command? They're just going to send us back."

"Well…we may be able to get in and out before they arrive."

"How do you figure?"

"Um…" From her facial expression, Hardy could tell that she was trying to think of the most advantageous way to phrase her thought. "So, Cambridge called me, told me about the case, I said I'd be there. I mean, it's a lynching, and I'm head of hate crimes, so, of course, right?"

"Right…"

"And I thought, it could be helpful to know if this might be part of the larger case, right?"

Hardy nodded slowly, unsure of where she was going with this. "Right…"

"So Mark and I made some calls to the constabularies around Cambridge – because if it is part of the case, and there are other identical crimes, they won't be too far away. And as it turned out, it's a good thing we did, because, unfortunately, there were two other lynchings last night, in Ipswich and Peterborough. We told them to go ahead with processing the scenes and all that, send us everything they have, and give CT Command a call once it's a more reasonable hour."

"And what did you tell Cambridge? And I thought your team wasn't on this case,"

"Mark was visiting my parents with me, so I made good use of him. And, well, after talking to Ipswich and Peterborough, I immediately started packing up, and forgot to call Cambridge back."

"You forgot."

She smirked. "I had a bad concussion once. I can be forgetful."

It was after 6:00 am by the time they arrived on the scene in Cambridge. The sun had begun creeping over the horizon in the first leg of its day-long journey across the sky. Hardy nodded awake from his fitful nap, leaning against the car window, just as Bo pulled off onto a grit road, surrounded by trees and broken-down vehicles.

"This isn't Cambridge," he muttered groggily.

"Sure it is. The River Great Ouse is just on the other side of those trees." Bo replied before quipping, "And g'morning to you, Sir."

They grabbed their bags from the car and walked on the damp grass, down a narrow pathway that led through the trees. An officer greeted them at the crime scene tape, checked their credentials, and allowed them passage.

They came into the clearing and immediately stopped short when they realized what they were looking at. Though they had both been aware that they were there to investigate a lynching, they hadn't braced themselves for what they would find. A boy's body, dressed in a football jersey and jeans, hung down from a tree near the river. Hardy and Bo exchange dark glances before proceeding forward.

"Christ, he's just a child," Hardy muttered.

"My God…I had no idea." Bo's face had lost its colour as she looked on, aghast, toward the victim.

They approached the tree and look on in silent horror. The boy's body hung limply from the tree, with his shoulders slumped downward and his chin pressed against his chest. His complexion had developed an unnatural hue and his unseeing eyes were still slightly open. He was missing one shoe, and Bo could see dried blood on the sole of his exposed sock. He also had defensive wounds on his hands and forearms. She made these observations in some distant, clinical part of her mind, scarcely registering what she was seeing.

Bo turned to one of the local officers who was standing by.

"Do we know his time of death?"

"Based on rigor mortis and liver temperature, we think it was sometime between 6:00 and 10:00 last night. Body was discovered around 1:30 in the morning."

"By whom?"

"Bunch of kids. They were all hanging out at one of their houses, over there," the officer pointed across the narrow river to a few farmhouses, "and came out here, probably to drink, or smoke, or what have you."

"And they've been interviewed?"

"Preliminary intake when they called it in. Then we sent them home, but told them we'd call them back for interviews. They didn't have anything to do with this, though. They were all accounted for between six and ten last night. Plus, you should have seen how freaked out they were. They seemed really disturbed."

Bo looked back toward the boy's body. "Understandably so." She paused, and then asked, "Can we get him down now? It really doesn't seem right to have him up there."

The officer nodded. "Yes, ma'am. We were instructed to wait for you to arrive so that you could make your own notes. If we have your go-ahead, we'd like to get him down, too."

Hardy stepped in: "Assuming SOCO's already been through here and they have everything they need?"

"Yes, Sir. They finished up just as you were arriving. Davis is still on site to take the branch and rope into evidence once we get him down."

Hardy and Bo walked back toward the parking area, having wordlessly agreed not to subject themselves to witnessing as the other officers worked to release the boy's body from the tree. They went through the officers' notes from their intakes interviews with the four teens who had found the boy's body, and tentatively concurred with the local officers' conclusion that the teens had no involvement in the boy's death other than the discovery of his body.

While Hardy spoke with SOCO to discuss physical evidence, Bo called reception at the local constabularies and asked if any reports had been filed about a missing teenage boy. She set to work researching the details on those files to see if any matched the description of this boy. Later in the afternoon, the group congregated to discuss preliminary findings.

"I think we may have an ID on the victim. Sixteen year-old Fadi Qureshi was reported missing by his parents when he didn't come home after band practice yesterday. The band teacher confirmed that he attended the practice after school, but doesn't know where he went from there."

One of the officers spoke up, "We found his other shoe a little ways down the road there. Based on the state of his sock, it looks like he may have lost the shoe while running, and just kept on running. It's pretty torn up."

"And we're taking the rope back to the lab for analysis, priority one."

Hardy winced as he asked, "Do we know if he was still alive when he was strung up? His parents will want to know."

"We can't be certain until we do the full post-mortem, but based on the marks on his neck, it looks like he was still alive. It…" the officer hesitated and looked down at her feet, "It wouldn't have been a good way to go."

Hardy sighed. "No, I suppose not."

After discussing the details that they had thus-far uncovered for a while longer, Bo looked at Hardy meaningfully before finally telling the group, "You're going to want to call CT Command on this. There were two other similar deaths last night, in Ipswich and Peterborough. It's probably part of a series of hate crimes that CT Command is already investigating."

They were mostly silent on the drive to the hotel. They had agreed to check in and stay for a few days to follow up on leads and try to get somewhere with their own investigation, but beyond that and a few logistics for the evening, they had barely spoken since leaving the crime scene. Hardy couldn't discern whether he was surprised by Petra's reaction to the case.

As they walked down the hall toward their respective rooms, Petra mumbled that she was going to take a shower and sleep for a couple of hours.

"Then shall we meet later to get some work done over dinner?" Hardy asked.

"Yeah. Sure. Sounds good." Petra looked exhausted – the sight of the young boy's dead body was obviously affecting her.

"Was this your first murder?"

Petra nodded as she let out a sigh. "I can't understand how someone could do that to a person. It's just…" she shook her head, at a loss for words.

For his part, Hardy didn't know how to console her. He, too, felt deeply affected by the scene, and by the whole case, but he reasoned that his greater level of experience had steeled him to a certain extent. He watched as she walked down the hallway to her room and wordlessly disappeared behind the door. He entered his own room and heaved an exhausted sigh as he lowered himself gingerly onto the bed.

After a few minutes, he heard the shower running in Bo's room next door, and then eventually shut off, followed by the distinct murmur of the television set. He rolled over and decided to get a little sleep, himself – though he had slept briefly on the car ride from Bristol, the day's events had taken a physical and emotional toll on him, and he knew well enough to recognize when he needed rest.

He woke up a couple of hours later, and after briefly consulting the digital clock on his bedside table, decided to check on Bo and see if she'd like to go have dinner. He was still worried about her response to this case; though he didn't know her well, her quiet, reserved, forlorn expression that afternoon had left him feeling perturbed. She hadn't seemed like herself, and he didn't know what support she would need during this time. He remembered too well the nightmares that had haunted him following the Sandbrook case, and the self-destructive spiral it had led him down.

He first knocked softly on her door, not wanting to disturb her if she had also fallen asleep. When she did not respond, he considered simply texting her, but then decided to knock once more. She came to the door and he was immediately taken aback by her demeanour.

"Hey, come on in, I was just gonna text you. Um, we should probably get our case files together and head downstairs for dinner. Are you hungry? Or did you already eat? I can just grab something quickly." Hardy tried to scrutinize her tone, confused by the flurry of her movements, in conjunction with her avoidance of eye contact, and her quick, clipped manner of speech.

"Erm, yeah, I could go for a bite." Hardy sat on the foot of Bo's bed as she flew around the room packing up her files. "There's no rush, of course – it's open late." He paused. "Erm, Bo, are you feeling…quite okay? I know that we had a tough day today."

"Yep, fine! Just gotta brush my teeth!" She called as she traipsed into the washroom and closed the door – a little too harshly – behind her.

Hardy sighed, perplexed. He hated to think of Bo in this way, but his investigator's instincts were telling him that there was something wrong. Or did he just not know her well enough to know that this is how she coped with grief? Or had she already bounced back from the day's upset – and with a vengeance? Even with these possibilities lingering in his mind, something felt wrong. He sighed again as he leaned back slightly on the bed. His hand felt something under the comforter, and his heart immediately sank.

Glancing at the washroom door and still hearing Bo brushing her teeth, he carefully peeled back the comforter, and grimaced in disappointment. Bo had clearly raided the refrigerator in her hotel room and consumed the contents of several small liquor bottles.

Hardy stared at the bottles, struggling to collect his thoughts and figure out how best to respond to this situation. We was acutely aware of his lack of qualification to intervene on Bo's drinking – for one, it was a position that he had never been placed in before; and for another, he wasn't even sure that he knew Bo well enough to broach the topic with her. He didn't have time to think, however, as Bo abruptly flew out of the bathroom, and stopped dead in her tracks at seeing what Hardy had uncovered.

They stared at one another for a seemingly interminable time. Hardy could see that Bo was flipping through a catalogue of well-worn excuses in her mind, and struggling between coming clean and covering up what she had done.

Hardy finally broke the deafening silence. "Bo…you know you shouldn't be drinking,"

She still looked like she may have been trying to come up with an excuse, but ultimately gave up with a sigh and sank heavily onto the foot of the bed beside him. "I know." She raked her fingers through the short-shorn side of her hair, a contemplative tic that Hardy had noticed her doing before. She was staring at her hands in her lap. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry; you have to think about your health, and your life. A really bad day is not a reason to…erm…self-medicate like this."

She shrugged. "I know that, too. I'm an idiot. I knew I was throwing away my sobriety, and I did it anyway."

"You're not an idiot, Petra." Hardy spoke firmly. "And you've only thrown away your sobriety if you continue to drink." He paused. "Are you going to continue to drink?"

"Well, I certainly don't want to." She mumbled.

"Alright, that's a start. Everyone makes mistakes. You just have to move past it and…try to avoid making the same mistakes."

Bo nodded slowly. "I know. I have to be better."

"This need only be a wee setback. You're not the first person to fall off of the wagon, and you won't be the last. It's been a bad day – probably would drive lots of people to drink. But you're also better than lots of people, so I know that you're going to get past this and be just fine." He patted her gently on the knee. "You're going to be okay."

Petra looked down at where Hardy's hand lay innocently and comfortingly on her knee. She placed her hand on his, and turned her face upward to look at him. They held a locked gaze, both now acutely aware of their location and the vulnerability that they both felt. Hardy felt his heart pounding in his chest, and thought he could sense a buzz of energy between them.

Petra leaned forward and kissed him gently on the mouth. He met her kiss, but did not encourage her any further. After a few seconds, she pulled away. He dazedly opened his eyes – he couldn't recall closing them – and looked at her soberly. His body compelled him to lean toward her, and for a moment he desperately wanted to. Ultimately, he stood from the bed and gently touched her shoulder as he straightened himself.

"Well, I should probably get going. Don't you worry now, everything is going to be alright." He turned and headed to the door. He paused with the door slightly open and said, "I'll see you in the morning, Petra."

His mind and body fought mercilessly against one another as he forced himself down the hallway to his own room. Once safely inside, he closed his eyes and leaned heavily against the door for several minutes as he processed the events that had just taken place, and waited for his heart to regain some normalcy.


	12. Chapter 12

Petra woke up early the following morning, as she always had after a night of drinking. Though she had been committed to sobriety for six years, it had only been two and a half years since she had last succumbed to a one-night stand with her addiction, and every time that she did, it felt the same.

She lay still in her bed for a long time, feeling the familiar anxiety, remorse, and self-loathing that she always did after a relapse. She did some breathing exercises as she tried to focus on dismantling the anxiety, but it was a difficult undertaking as she was also trying not to address the primary reason why she was feeling to overwhelmed: in a drunken spiral of terrible decision-making, she had attempted to come onto Alec Hardy.

It was always the same story in Petra's book: get drunk, do something stupid, then spend a week or two pulling her hair out because she was too devastated and humiliated to be in her own company. She wished she could call Mark, but she knew that she wasn't ready to face his gentle, compassionate support. She needed time to tear herself apart.

She fought the impulse to hide under the sheets and fume at herself, and instead pulled herself to the bathroom and ran the shower. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, searching for a sign as to whether she was still the same person, or if this was the beginning of the end. She had done this often in her drinking days, seeking some sort of indication as to whether she had hit rock-bottom. She used to tell herself that there was no point in trying to get sober until she hit rock-bottom, and used this as an excuse to keep drinking. On some level, of course, she knew that she was making an excuse, and knew also that by the time she got to that point, she might not be able to recognize it – or herself.

Staring at her own reflection as the steam accumulated in the small washroom, she felt a strong urge to break into sobs, but she found that she could not cry. She just felt sick, ashamed, and anxious. As a combination, it made her feel as though her body was pulling itself apart from the inside.

Forty minutes later, she was sitting at a table in the dining room, poring over her notes and trying to emulate enjoyment of some dry toast and black coffee, when Hardy sat down in the chair across from her. She wanted to ignore him, for them to ignore each other, for the case to be over and to never have to see one another ever again. She wanted to run away, preferably from herself, and never face her humiliating mistakes.

Hardy clearly had another course of action in mind. Once it became obvious that she was not going to acknowledge him, he cleared his throat. "G'mornin', Bo."

She nodded, still not looking up from the notes in which she was desperately pretending to be engrossed. "Good morning."

Hardy was flabbergasted as to what was expected of him. "Erm…so are you feeling better, then?"

She jerked her head up and smiled vacantly. "Yep, all good, thanks." She was purposefully dismissive of his attempt to discuss the previous evening.

"Right. Erm, so…" he tried to hide the bewilderment in his voice. "I just ask, because when I saw you in your room…you know, last night…"

"I'm fine, thanks for asking. Just reviewing some notes right now." Her tone was still dismissive, but now had a warning edge.

In a moment of great fortune for Petra, Hardy's mobile rang at that moment. Hardy winced, but upon reading the call display, immediately picked it up, holding a single index finger to Petra in hopes that they could bookmark their conversation for later.

"Hardy."

"Hardy, it's Alistair. Look, so I was able to trace one of the forum user's activities on other forums to pull together a partial profile; most users anonymize their activities across forums to prevent exactly this, but this bloke seems to have gotten lazy. I crossed that data with some…let's call it metadata -"

"What's metadata?"

Alistair paused. "It's something that we don't need to get into right now, other than I'm telling you that it's reliable."

"Can I reliably get an arrest and conviction using it?"

"Yes…just make sure that I brief you before you go talking about it. Look mate, it's perfectly legal in the way that we're gathering the data, and all I did was extend its application a little. Honestly, this is what this type of resource was built for. And I got you a hit!"

"What hit, Alistair?" Hardy was starting to feel a rustle of impatience.

"Now, when I tell you this, just remember that I told you that the data is reliable. I eventually got an IP address for this forum user, and traced it back to a Ms. Jane Abbott of Sheffield. She's -"

"Jane Abbott, seventy-eight years old, widowed, retired, living in Sheffield." Hardy stated flatly. _Jesus Christ, we were right on top of this weeks ago._

At Hardy's recital of Ms. Abbott's information, Petra forgot that she was pretending to ignore him, and perked up. She silently mouthed, _"Abbott? In Sheffield?"_ to Hardy, who shrugged in excited bewilderment.

While Hardy finished his phone call with Alistair, Petra placed a to-go order for Hardy and settled the bill. No sooner had he ended the call then Petra stated plainly, "We need to check out. I can get us to Sheffield in two and a half, maybe three hours. I'll let the Cambridge team know not to expect us."

Jane Abbott lived in a small but well-appointed detached home in Sheffield. Hardy sat with her on a scotch-guarded couch while he started with small talk and basic question. Petra excused herself by offering to go fix tea, and took the opportunity to look around the home while she waited for the water to boil. She couldn't fathom that this elderly blind woman had even participated in, let alone masterminded, a complex series of increasingly violent hate crimes spanning the country; but still, that they had been led back to her twice now – from the plates on the car, and now the forum results – left her searching desperately for what CT Command could have missed.

Petra steeped the tea and brought the tray into the living room where Hardy was starting to zero in on slightly more specific questions.

"And do you own a computer, ma'am?" He asked gently, trying not to alarm this woman and give her cause to ring her solicitor.

"Yes, but I never use it, dear. Most folks know that it's better to give me a ring. I barely knew how to use the thing even before my cataracts."

"Of course, I understand – and is there anyone else who does use your computer?"

"I think that my Josh uses it from time to time. He's such a sweet boy – he takes me out on my errands and helps me out with little things around the house."

Petra held up a framed high school graduation photo. "And is this Josh, ma'am?"

Hardy and Ms. Abbott both turned toward her. While Ms. Abbott had a good-natured and forgiving smile, Hardy widened his eyes and silently mouthed, " _She's bloody blind!_ "

Petra felt her face turn a deep shade of crimson. "Oh, I'm so sorry, ma'am. There's a nice graduation photo here of a young man. Do you think that would be Josh?"

Ms. Abbott chuckled earnestly. "That would be him, dear. My grandson."

"I can feel it, Bo, we're finally getting somewhere now!" Hardy's unmistakeable tone of excitement rang through Petra's car as they drove toward the hotel in Sheffield that would be their office for the evening.

"I've got Dal running basic background on Porter – HCMD's not on the case, this is just a favour. I could do it myself, but he's back at HQ with the better computer." Petra was again raking her fingertips through the short hair on one side of her head. Hardy tried not to stare, but he found it to be a compelling mannerism to watch. He wondered if she was aware that she was doing it.

Petra felt him staring and shot a glance at him. "What?"

Hardy looked away suddenly and shrugged. "Nothing, just got a lot of work to do." He paused for a moment before listing all of the action items running through his mind: "Full internet history, anything at all that we can find, including social media. Criminal record, obviously. Purchase history, especially online. Social and political affiliations; employment and education; we need everything."

Petra nodded eagerly. "Dal can get all of that tonight. I want to follow his movements since the first attack to today, and make a timeline of everywhere he's been, everything he's done, and everyone he's talked to during that time. If he's involved, there's going to be something in there, and we have to find it."

They devised some further plans for investigating, and eventually fell into a pensive silence. This lead was a welcome distraction for Petra, who knew that she would otherwise be spinning out of control after the events of the previous evening. She forced herself to focus on the work, and not allow her thoughts to stray. She was abruptly interrupted, however, when Hardy cleared his throat meaningfully.

"So, ah, we didn't really get a chance to talk all that much this morning before Alistair called," Hardy began tentatively. "I just thought we might want to…erm, I dunno, ah, clarify -"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Hardy," Petra sighed in exasperation. "Alright, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I relapsed – I assure you that it will not happen again. I'm sorry that I tried…I'm sorry that I was unprofessional and inappropriate, and I assure you that _that_ will not happen again, either."

"Look, Bo," Hardy began, but he had expected that she would interrupt him, and so he faltered and she continued.

"It had been a tough day, and ultimately it wasn't my best moment. None of it will ever happen again, I'll get back on the straight and narrow, you don't need to worry. Can we just forget it and move on, please?"

Hardy sat in stunned silence. She had obviously delivered many reassuring apologies in her life, and he now felt conflicted; he felt guilty for bringing it up again, and didn't want to make her feel worse, but at the same time, he hadn't been able to get a word in edgewise.

Finally, he responded: "Alright, then, it sounds like the matter is closed."


	13. Chapter 13

"Okay, I've got a history of misdemeanours here, but they were all in his youth, and he has a clean record since age 18." Petra was hunched over her laptop, the screen casting a bright glow on her thoughtful but excited face.

"Alright, anything like we've seen in this series? Any escalation?"

"Hm…nothing even approaching the scale that we've seen here, but he did have some very minor vandalism activity. He spray-painted some bloke's car…"

Hardy perked up. "What did he paint?"

Petra scrolled through the record on her screen then frowned slightly. "It doesn't say."

Hardly leaned back in his chair and exhaled as he absent-mindedly combed his fingers over his stubble. Petra had noticed that he exhibited this quirk when he was trying to rack his brain; she wondered idly if he was at all aware of doing it.

"Alright, Bo, where do we go from here?" They both knew precisely the next logical step to this investigation, and both equally parts dreaded and relished it.

Petra grinned. "Surveillance."

* * *

"God, I am getting a veritable trucker's arse sitting around here," Petra groaned as she tried to stretch out her legs as much as possible in the driver's seat of her compact car.

"Yep, well, that's surveillance," Hardy responded. They had been operating surveillance to little benefit for the past nine hours, sitting in Petra's car and waiting for Josh Porter to do something – anything.

"Yeah, I know, I know. But admit it, this'll make you appreciate all those young coppers doing your grunt work back in Bristol."

"I'll be sure to send them a basket. And never work a case without constabulary support again."

Petra chuckled. "You know, this reminds me of this time when I was gigging as a PI, I once had to tail this bloke fourteen hours a day for four days, all just to get a picture of him taking out his rubbish bin."

"Ah, workers compensation case?"

"Yeah, paid my rent for three months off of that case. God, that was such a shit job."

Hardy nodded. "Well, at least this beats riding the desk back in Bristol. Got bored out of my bloody tree doing that."

"You don't see much field work, then?"

Hardy paused. "Erm, not for a while, no." Petra waited for him to go on, but he remained silent.

* * *

Petra yawned. "Well, twelve hours sitting in a car to learn absolutely nothing new. That's surveillance for ya." They were eating at a local diner, having decided to finally call it a day.

Hardy dragged his hands over his exhausted face. "Yeah, maybe tomorrow we think about getting a rental car."

"So he doesn't catch on?"

"Yeah, and maybe something with a little more leg room. I don't think I can even feel my feet anymore."

"Well, I guess one of the perks of being outside of London is that we can actually drive a normal car. Bloody hell, I tell you, parking in London is a nightmare."

"Oh, everything in London is a nightmare, I don't know how you manage there. Are you going to move back to Bristol at some point, do you think?"

Petra laughed. "What, settle down in a nice house, have a couple of kids?"

Hardy scoffed. "Bristol's not really all that different from London. Just more tolerable."

"Oh, Bristol is great, I'm glad to be from there. But I…outside of HCMD, I don't really know what long-term plans I have." She paused before adding, as casually as she could, "What about you, DI Hardy? Any kids? Hopes and dreams for the future?"

Hardy took a long time to finish what he was eating and take a long sip of tea before responding, "Got a daughter, sixteen. She lives with her mother."

Petra was getting the same sense that she had in the car earlier in the day; that Hardy was purposely staying away from getting into detail about himself. Deciding to gently press her luck, she said, "But you haven't always lived in England,"

"And who says you're not a spot-on detective."

Petra made a face. "Well, what brought you here?"

"You did. In a tiny car. To choke down soggy taters and microwaved tea." He crumpled his paper napkin and dropped it onto his plate. "You just about finished?"

Petra sighed. "Sure. Yeah. Let's go then."

They had driven a short while when Hardy said quietly, "Moved to London, then Sandbrook. Settled down, then went to Broadchurch. Been in Bristol a few months."

This explication raised more questions for Petra than it answered, but she decided not to push it this time.

* * *

"Are you really only going to have tea for breakfast?" Petra was incredulous. "We've got a long day; you're going to want to eat something first."

"I'll be fine."

"This is why you're so thin and pale, you know. You've got to eat more."

"Didn't your doctor parents teach you that it's rude to insult people?"

"My doctor parents taught me that proper diet and exercise keep us on the right side of the ground."

Hardy looked up for a half-second and then quickly looked away. Petra frowned, confused. She couldn't help but sense that she had struck a nerve.

They briefly went over their notes together, planning their movements for the day, and then climbed into the rental car – a full-size sedan this time – for their third full day of surveillance.

"I just got a text from Dal – if we can get some more personal information on this guy, we can build a partial profile to see if it fits the profiles of any of the crimes. Or at least point us in the right direction as to what kind of crime he'd be inclined toward." Petra looked at Hardy hopefully. Sitting in a car with his sullenness all day had made her pine for some validation – was she doing a good job? Did he like her? Were they on the right track with the case?

Hardy nodded slowly. "That's good. But we have to be careful here – we're not operating through a constabulary, and HCMD isn't your PI firm. We have to have good documentation on everything we do, every resource we access." He thought for a moment, gazing into the middle-distance. "Just think how bloody devastating it would be if we wrapped the case just to have it thrown out."

Petra turned in her seat and looked at him in complete seriousness. "That's not an outcome that I'm willing to accept."

Hardy caught his breath. Something about her laser-sharp focus and determination seemed to illuminate an entirely different side of her personality. While he had never found her to be flippant or inappropriately unserious, her youthful energy generally overshadowed the depth of her character. He wondered how consciously she exhibited these differing facets of her personality and professionalism. He wondered what she was really like, in her natural state. He stopped his thoughts abruptly in their tracks. He had been successful so far at keeping Bo out of his mind – in that way – and he didn't want to start getting distracted now.

Bo continued, "And anyway, the team is pretty busy right now. They know that I'm working on this case, but they're pretty tied up with these serial sexual assaults -"

"What assaults now?"

"Oh yeah, there've been a whole string of sexual assaults at a university campus, so HCMD has been working on that case. Mark's taking the lead, and they know I'm available if they need anything."

"Christ, who's raising these people? You can't just go around…" Hardy trailed off and shook his head, frustrated. He made a mental note to call Daisy when he got back to the hotel.

"You can't just go around what? Wearing a short skirt? Drinking at school parties?" Bo was clearly ready to fight him on this.

"No, no, no, Christ no. Come on, of course I mean you can't go around just assaulting people." He stared Bo directly in the eye. "It's un-bloody-acceptable." He shook his head again. "I'm glad that your team is working on it."

Bo nodded. "Right. Of course. I totally agree."

* * *

Petra looked up as Hardy walked into the dining room. Per their usual routine, she would wake up first, go for a jog, shower, and head to the hotel dining room for the continental breakfast, and he would meet her there to go over the day's plans. He slowly and gingerly lowered himself into the seat across from her.

"If I can say, mate, you're looking kinda like shit."

"'M fine," he grunted in response.

"Well as a personal favour to me, could you at least get down a granola bar or an egg? Honestly, you'd be so much less grouchy if you just ate once and again." She slid a small plate and a glass of orange juice toward him across the table.

"Some people think I'm excellent company," he mumbled as he picked at the plate.

Petra laughed mirthfully. "Fifty quid if you make the introduction. Five days in a car with you and I've seen you neither eat nor exhibit normal human social skills."

To her pleasure, she could tell that he was fighting off a grin. She was surprised by how much she had come to look forward to spending this time with him, grouchy or not. She was even more surprised by how she found her mind wandering to thoughts of him once the day was over.

"Oh, great, now he's going to post a letter. Fascinating." Hardy rolled his eyes. They had spent five days following Josh Porter in three different cars, and so far he hadn't demonstrated any indication of involvement in the hate crimes. "It's so damn frustrating; we know he's involved – he's got to be – but we haven't a thing to show."

"I mean, we could bring him in officially for questioning, maybe he'd crack…" Bo began, somewhat unhopefully.

"Ahh, that won't work. We don't have anything really to even question him _about_. And then, what, if we tip our hand, he'll go telling all of his little friends."

"Well we're not exactly using our time well just following him around."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I know." Hardy scrubbed his hand over his beard and frowned. "I just can't have us be stuck at this point."

Bo nodded. "Shit, let's just go back to the hotel. We can dig a little more on suppliers of the lacquer thinner that was used in the mosque fires, see if anything in common with this kid comes up. We need to know where to look."

Hardy sighed. "Yeah, you're right. Let's just go back and…figure something out."

Petra looked at him. He looked tired and frustrated. "Alright, we'll go back. Only, here -" she thrust a granola bar at him, "Just eat this first. Surveillance doesn't treat you well. You gotta eat something."

He raised an eyebrow at her, but grudgingly complied.

* * *

Back at the hotel, Bo sat cross-legged on her bed with her computer on her lap, hunched over and squinting slightly. Catching a glance at her, Hardy wondered if she sometimes wore eyeglasses. She was absent-mindedly picking popcorn out of a bowl sitting beside her, and he noticed with interest that she would always wipe her fingers on the comforter after eating. He wondered why she didn't just grab a napkin; with her clear engrossment in her research, he wondered if she even noticed that she was wiping her hands repeatedly on a likely unclean hotel comforter. He stopped himself, clearing his throat in hopes that it would also clear his thoughts.

Bo looked up quizzically. She had noticed that he sometimes cleared his throat before speaking; but this time, when she looked up, while he was looking at her, he didn't say anything. She briefly touched her cheek self-consciously, hoping that she wasn't blushing. When he didn't say anything for a moment, she proceeded: "We have a list of all of the records of the lacquer thinner in question being purchased in the window that we identified – now, this doesn't account for buying it more than four months in advance, and will leave out any cash purchases. For the online purchases, we're running IP backgrounds, and for the in-store purchases with debit or credit, we've put out a call for all CCTV recordings. It's still a long shot, but at least I'm not sitting in a rental car right now." She grinned brightly. "All we can do is our best."

Hardy nodded, and Bo went back to reviewing her research. After a time, he asked, "And how's that case going? The one your team is on?"

Petra was surprised that he remembered, let alone that he would ask. "Oh, it's going. It's really upsetting, stuff, of course. Our team's approach is basically three-pronged in this case: we work with the police to help identify the perpetrator or perpetrators; through that process, identify people who need to be educated about consent; and establish systemic programs to try to prevent this kind of thing from coming up again." She shrugged and sighed. "Sometimes it feels like a goddamn losing battle."

Hardy nodded slowly. "Yeah, I know the feeling. It's a wonder that this keeps coming up in universities. You'd think that these educated people with their fancy degrees would know better."

"Ha, fat chance of that. You'd be amazed how many rapists I've spoken with who don't even think they did anything wrong. If she was his wife, or they'd gone out or had sex before, or she was drunk or wearing a short skirt, or he'd bought her a few drinks or a nice dinner – these men feel genuinely entitled to women's bodies. If she's not punching and kicking and screaming, he assumes he's all in the clear." She shook her head "It's pretty fu—it's very disappointing."

"Yeah, it's a bloody crime wave out there." Hardy bit the inside of his cheek, then, studying his hands in his lap, took a breath. "Actually, I have to talk to you about that. Now, I know you don't want to get into it or anything, but you never gave me a chance to say my piece about…last week."

Petra rolled her eyes and ran her hand through her hair. _This again._ After a moment, she waved at him to continue.

"I just…I don't think it's very gentlemanly…to, ah, let things carry on with someone when they're not quite themselves. You know, because you'd had a bit to drink and all. It's not…it's not that I wouldn't, erm, carry on a bit, under different circumstances." He twisted his hands uncomfortably in his lap. "With you, or…"

They were silent for silent for a few minutes. Hardy glanced at Bo surreptitiously to see that she was blushing furiously. Even blocked by her laptop screen, he could tell that she was pulling at her fingers.

Finally, she spoke. "Those are very good consent practices. I…commend you. Very gentlemanly."

"Ah, yeah, you know, so. If you did want to have dinner sometime, with me." He was aware that he had been consistently failing to form complete sentences, but was at a loss to ask her out properly.

Bo laughed hard, and the pounding in his chest skipped a beat. "We've been sharing three squares a day for a week, and you don't eat even then. Dinner seems like a pretty queer proposition."

Hardy threw up his hands. "Well, I don't know. You can just say no, you don't need to be a knob about it."

Bo grinned at him widely. "I'm saying yes, you prat." She chuckled. " _But_ you have to promise to eat a proper meal. I won't have you making me feel like a cow."

"Alright, fine, we'll have a proper dinner tomorrow."

"Good."

"Then it's a date."

They held direct eye contact for a moment, as though they were both daring the other to back down.

"Yes, it is."


End file.
